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Conveyors: Critical to Food Safety in Processing Plants

Written by Howard on September 11, 2023.

Your plant’s conveyors touch food at every point of production from receiving to packaging, and before and after critical processing stages like slicing, thawing, pasteurizing, and cooking.

That makes your conveyor equipment a crucial part of your plant’s food safety infrastructure.

We take a look at how today’s food-grade sanitary conveyors are built to protect both consumers and your business from bacterial contamination that can cause foodborne illness.

We’ll examine what sanitary conveyors do and explain how they contribute to food processing plant safety. We’ll also consider some of the direct and indirect costs to your business of a food recall and the ever-tighter sanitary regulations that processors need to meet.

We’ll also look at some specific ways that well-designed and well-implemented food-grade conveyor systems can help ensure safety on your processing line. Read on to learn more.

SANITARY CONVEYORS AND FOOD-PROCESSING PLANT SAFETY

Conveyors move ingredients and product between processing stages in any production plant. They ensure the different applications in your plant are integrated into a single process and automate handling challenges like lifting, lowering, or reorienting product for further processing.

In food manufacturing, conveyors are critical to allowing large amounts of product to be processed quickly and efficiently, but they also perform another crucial function: your conveyor equipment needs to maintain the same food hygiene standards as the rest of your plant.

SANITARY CONVEYORS AND FOOD SAFETY

Bacterial contamination is the most serious threat to food safety, especially where consumable products are being handled in bulk. Harmful bacteria can grow quickly if food becomes trapped or equipment is not properly sanitized and can spread quickly through any exposed product.

Food-grade conveyor equipment is designed to avoid contamination of your product.

Modern conveyor food processing systems include food-safe components and special features designed to maintain hygiene to both prevent dangerous bacteria from contaminating your product and limit its ability to spread.

However, sanitary conveyor equipment also helps protect your product by:

Limiting the time that food is exposed to potential contamination
Combining and reducing processing steps to minimize handling
Matching handling techniques to your specific product.

Today, food-grade conveyors provide effective sanitary control while offering a full range of sanitary handling solutions that can be customized to the needs of your product or the constraints of your production space. These include:

Belt conveyors for flexible, seamless line integrations
Bucket and incline conveyors for raising product in motion
Tote dumpers for safe, efficient bulk handling
Horizontal motion conveyors for loose or granular products
Vibratory conveyors for efficiency, value-added sanitary conveying

THE REAL COSTS OF FOOD CONTAMINATION

Food-safe solutions designed with your product and process in mind are critical when you consider the real cost of a food safety failure or product recall.

The CDC estimates that sicknesses caused by food-borne pathogens affect 48 million Americans every year, with up to 128,000 people being hospitalized by bacterial pathogens such as campylobacter, listeria, salmonella, and E. coli.

Beyond the seriousness of causing your product’s consumers to become ill, increasingly sophisticated industry monitoring means manufacturers are subject to ever-higher hygiene standards and more sophisticated contamination tracing techniques.

Today, even a limited product recall can cost your company up to $10 million. The cost of downtime and lost product of a complete line shutdown to deep clean, sanitize, and test equipment can be far higher.

In addition, the indirect costs to your business can be hard to measure but just as real. Among other things, these can include:

Damage to your brand
Damage to your company’s reputation
Loss of public confidence in your product category
Loss of key staff
Lower workforce morale

MEETING TODAY’S FOOD SAFETY STANDARDS

To minimize the risk to consumers and the food system as a whole, regulators and industry groups require food processing equipment, including sanitary conveyors, to meet a wide range of standards. Common standards in the U.S. today include:

Consumer Brands Association (CBA) — (formerly Grocery Manufacturers Association)
American Bakers Association (ABA)
North American Meat Institute (NAMI)
USDA
FDA
ISO 22000

Compliance with these standards is enforced by regular equipment inspections and testing for processors falling into particular industries or product categories. Typically, any food-exposed surface needs to pass a rigorous surface-swab test to meet sanitary requirements.

Safety standards are also constantly improving. For example, the FDA Food Safety Modernization Act is being rolled out and will raise standards significantly in several sectors.

The best equipment already exceeds current standards to help ensure your process continues to comply with advancing food safety requirements for years to come.

HOW DO SANITARY CONVEYORS IMPROVE FOOD SAFETY?

Let’s take a look at how today’s food-grade conveying equipment works to protect food safety, including good design, practice principles, and specific technologies.

1. Minimizing Handling

Perhaps the most significant contribution conveyors make to food safety is to minimize the amount of physical handling that your product receives. By reducing the need for human contact with food in order to move product between processes, a major source of contamination is removed.

The ability of different types of conveyors to move, raise, lower, and change the direction of travel means the need for human handling of food is often eliminated entirely. Some, like horizontal motion conveyors, can even slow down or reverse direction to allow parts to be cleaned or replaced without stopping the line.

2. Matching Technology to Process

Choosing the right conveyor for your product or process is critical to maintaining a consistent level of hygiene. For example, vibratory conveyors are best for preventing the sticking of cooked food, while horizontal motion conveyors keep frozen product like seafood moving.

While many smaller operators may be tempted to choose standard off-the-shelf conveyor equipment that seems to meet their needs, seasoned, at-scale producers usually prefer to work with an experienced equipment provider who can match conveyor equipment to their needs.

3. Sanitary Materials

The best food-grade conveyor equipment is made from high-quality sanitary materials. To minimize the risk of contamination, any surface that comes into contact with food must be:

Smooth and free of cracks, crevices, or dents
Nonporous and nonabsorbent
Non-reactive to food products
Corrosion resistant
Requires little or no maintenance to maintain these characteristics.

This applies particularly to painted, coated, or electroplated surfaces. Here there should never be any flaking, bubbling, or chipping of food-exposed surfaces.

Instead, to preserve hygiene, most leading brand manufacturers of sanitary conveyors choose either FDA-approved food-grade plastics for belting or bucket systems and a range of metals for contact surfaces, depending on the application.

Metal	Characteristics / Uses
Stainless Steel	Materials of choice for quality sanitary food conveyor equipment: Strong and durable Resistant to corrosion Natural anti-microbial properties.
Titanium	Superior strength and corrosion resistance but very expensive: Used only in special stainless steel alloys for handling very acidic foods.
Copper	Durable but susceptible to leaching when exposed to high-acid foods. Used mainly for brewing and cheese applications
Carbonized metal & cast iron	Tough, heavy materials used only for direct cooking surfaces and frying equipment.
Aluminum	Lightweight metal susceptible to corrosion. Scratches and warps over time. Used only in cheap equipment.

While a range of metals might be appropriate for applications handling dry materials like hard candy or pasta, dairy, and meat processors must meet much tighter sanitary standards.

Here, true food-grade stainless steel is preferred for its naturally antimicrobial properties and resistance to high-temperature wash-down, pasteurization, and sterilization procedures.

4. Designed for Safety

There’s more to building true professional-grade food conveying equipment than just choosing the best materials. Leading equipment is distinguished by smart design thinking about sanitation, often based on years of industry experience.

Minimal Moving Parts

Keeping machinery simple makes equipment easier to keep clean, maintain, and sanitize.

Reduces wear and tear to minimize downtime and maintenance calls
Fewer connections and other potential contamination points
Key components are easier to access for cleaning and maintenance
Simplifies sanitation and validation processes

Making equipment simpler also enables the toolless replacement of key components, reducing the likelihood of damage or contamination of your line by non-sterile maintenance tools.

Active Water and Condensation Management

The best equipment is designed to minimize moisture accumulation and actively manage liquids released by cooking, draining, and dewatering. Look for:

Angled surfaces
Tilted or grooved belts and conveyor surfaces
Self-draining piping systems

Water Ingress Control

For equipment exposed to high-temperature washdown and sterilization processes, such as conveyors handling dairy or raw meat products, look for features that seek to minimize water ingress between components. Look for:

Solid stainless steel tubing
Minimal unwelded joints, crevices, or fasteners
IP69K compliance: the top industry standard for limiting water ingress between parts

Minimized Bacteria Harboring Opportunities

Simple design, premium materials, and quality construction all help to minimize food-exposed places where bacteria could build up. They also make it easier to swab-test and validate equipment. Look for:

Properly designed and installed fasteners
Tight, overlapping joints and connections
Smooth, polished welds and well-milled contact surfaces
Radiused corners without welds

Also, be sure to look beyond direct contact surfaces when checking for harboring opportunities. Look carefully at the top edges and contact points with coverings or lids where moisture or waste could accumulate.

WHAT IS VALUE-ADDED SANITARY CONVEYING?

In addition to these industry-standard features, leading equipment providers offer technologies or features that add value to your food safety investment above that offered by standard sanitary conveying equipment. Here are some ways value-added sanitary conveying is achieved:

1. Combining/Eliminating Processes

Advanced equipment like PFI’s Magnaflex and VFII vibratory conveyors offers value-added processing that allows product to be laned, spread, de-watered, or reoriented while in motion, allowing the ability to combine or eliminate processes that were previously separate steps.

Fewer steps mean less overall handling or exposure time for vulnerable materials like sliced fresh produce, raw meats, or cheeses.

2. Improved Quality Control

Variable-speed horizontal motion conveyors allow finished products to be more easily inspected on moving trays prior to final packaging, thereby improving the quality of your output and allowing more opportunity to spot substandard product.

3. Clean-in-Place

Premium conveying equipment is generally customized for your specific application and may include option features, such as clean-in-place equipment. This allows food-exposed surfaces to be cleaner or to self-clean while the machine is still in operation.

Value-added equipment like belt scrapers, flip-down guarding, belt lifts, and quick-release take-ups minimize hands-on maintenance, helping to ensure sanitary conditions for longer.

PFI: INDUSTRY-LEADING SAFETY, VALUE-ADDED FEATURES

There’s no room for compromise when it comes to the safety of your product. PFI Conveyors is the recognized leader in supplying high-quality sanitary equipment that is the preferred choice of many of America’s most recognized food brands. Trust PFI to deliver:

Industry-leading know-how: With over 60 years of experience in almost every food processing vertical, we have the right technology for your process.
Better conveyor design: We are the recognized leaders in sanitary conveyor design. We offer fully customized, value-added solutions to tough food safety challenges.
Unparalleled service: We back our conveyors with our collaborative problem-solving approach of full-scale testing and ongoing support. We also install all of our products.

At PFI, we are committed to helping you find the best sanitary conveying solution for your needs and to working with you at every stage of the design and delivery process.

Click below to learn more about how investing in quality and safety upfront pays dividends over time. Contact us today to discover how we can put our unparalleled skills and experience to work for you.

10 Factors That Affect the Price of a Sanitary Conveyor System

Sanitary material handling and conveyor system

Planning for Sanitary Conveyor Designs [A Guide]

Written by Howard on August 31, 2023.

Better sanitary conveyor design can help increase efficiency, save space, and eliminate steps in your manufacturing process. If you’re building a plant or overhauling a product line, it makes sense to put conveyor design at the heart of your project planning process.

In this guide, we look at why smart conveyor design adds value to your investment in higher-quality equipment and increased process automation. We also suggest concrete steps to plan correctly for food-grade conveyors in your project.

LINE ITEM: WHY SANITARY CONVEYORS MATTER

For many plant managers and project teams, efforts to increase productivity focus on boosting the performance of key pieces of standalone processing equipment.

Increased automation means you can often do more to your product at each stage of your process, while intelligent sensors and advanced optics allow you to run operations faster and integrate processes more closely.

With all the hype, it’s easy to forget that the productivity of individual processes is only as good as the network that links them all together.

Your sanitary conveyor systems connect the individual parts of your lines into a unified whole, ensuring the product arrives where it’s needed next in exactly the volumes and proportions it’s needed in, all while maintaining your plant’s safety and hygiene protocols.

More Than an Add-On

Food-grade conveyor systems are more than an add-on. They’re a critical production component that drives productivity and adds real value to your process. On many food processing projects, however, effective conveyor design has become an afterthought.

Sanitary conveyor design is typically considered late in the front-end process, and equipment and layout decisions tend to be shaped around the constraints of more expensive “core” equipment rather than being approached as an integral part of your process.

Failing to plan for sanitary conveyor design can be a big problem for a couple of reasons:

Gains from investment in big-ticket processing capacity and increased automation are limited by under-investment in relatively inexpensive conveying equipment.
Poor handling, sanitation standards, and integrations can threaten product quality and food safety.
Performance gains can be wiped out from downtime required for modifications and fixes on inadequate conveyor equipment and poor system integrations.

Smart Conveyors Move You Forward

Most importantly, failing to think ahead about conveyor equipment is a missed chance to leverage bottom-line gains in efficiency, safety, and product quality driven by advances in sanitary conveyor design itself.

Today, sanitary food conveyors can do far more than move your product from point A to point B. As the industry has evolved, conveyors of all types have kept up, streamlining their design and functionality and increasing their capacity.

Value-Added Conveying

They’ve also become an increasingly active part of the food-handling process, adding and combining operations and in some cases even taking over processes that were handled by a dedicated stand-alone unit.

Leading conveyor manufacturers now speak about “value-added conveying” to describe the benefits smarter design and an integrated approach to planning can bring to your project.

For example, next-generation vibratory conveyors such as PFI’s Magnaflex can now be configured to spread, lane, or orientate products while in transit, combining or even eliminating process steps that once required their own dedicated application.

INTEGRATING SANITARY CONVEYOR DESIGN

Your sanitary conveyor system is no longer an add-on to your food handling process; it’s a critical part of your plan. Planning for conveyor equipment should be included in every stage of your front-end process, from initial scoping to final design.

It’s also critical to get advice from industry experts as early on in your planning process as possible. Consulting with a reputable equipment supplier can provide valuable insights about how the latest conveying technology can benefit your project.

Talk to your conveying equipment provider about:

Space Maximization

Increasingly flexible and compact elevating solutions and curved belt conveyors can help you get more out of a smaller plant footprint or make it easier to expand your existing plant configuration by adding a mezzanine platform or adjacent floor space.

In-Process Storage

Modern variable-speed and reversible conveyors such as the PURmotion horizontal motion conveyor allow you to smooth out stoppages and surges to keep production on track. Find out if this technology is right for your process.

Product-Specific Concerns

Established equipment makers have decades of experience across all types of food production. Let them flag potential problems and suggest industry-tested solutions for you early on in your design process.

Expert Integration

Prevent bottlenecks by making sure your conveying equipment seamlessly connects your process from receiving to packaging. Choose a partner with the skills to deliver customized solutions to integrate a wide range of OEM equipment.

Whole-Plant Perspective

Your sanitary conveyor system is the central nervous system of your plant. Get expert advice on how proposed design changes or last-minute machinery moves will affect your sanitary conveyor system and every other aspect of your manufacturing process.

Processing in Motion

Food conveying is not just about moving products from step to step. Modern conveyor systems can also manipulate your product in the process to increase efficiency or even eliminate an entire step.

Flexible value-added conveying equipment such as the VFII vibratory conveyor and other units can perform a wide range of “processing-in-motion” applications including:

Repositioning and aligning product
Screen, spread, grade, and lane loose granular foods
Dewater or shake washed, dipped, or fried foods
Adding toppings or coatings

Leveraging Industry Relationships

Working with a seasoned manufacturer with broad food industry experience offers benefits that go beyond your conveying equipment.

Manufacturers with broad project experience and pre-existing relationships with other OEMs can help speed up your design process and reduce potential issues during installation, commissioning, and production.

PLANNING FOR SANITARY CONVEYOR DESIGN

Including sanitary conveyor design into your plant build-out or upgrade project has real benefits, from faster and more effective project implementation to better troubleshooting to immediate improvements in production and long-term return on plant investments.

Planning for effective sanitary conveyor design as part of your plant build-out or overhaul is all about communication. Above all, your organization’s own food safety experts and maintenance team must be engaged in the design process from Day 1.

This helps keep stakeholders on the same page and ensures that equipment used across the project meets the required food safety standards. It also helps avoid costly delays later on in the process as equipment that has already been ordered is checked, replaced, or reconfigured.

Reputable manufacturers will be happy to share high-quality product information from basic spec sheets and demonstration videos to highly detailed CAD drawings of the actual units being built for your project.

4 STEPS TO CONVEYOR DESIGN SUCCESS

While it’s important to get expert assistance, conveyance equipment manufacturers will not be able to support you if you have not defined your own needs. The following steps will help your design team get their sanitary conveyor design process up and running.

Step 1: Know What You Need To Do

The first step to developing an effective sanitary conveyor design for your process is understanding exactly what you need your equipment to do.

That might sound simple, but for at-scale, multi-stage producers, it often means choosing between complex competing alternatives and aligning the interests of project stakeholders, from operations managers to food safety specialists.

Describing what you need to achieve is the first step in getting the help you need. At the very least, you need to know:

The process(es) and application(s) you need your conveyor equipment to enable, whether by linking existing equipment or as part of a “ground up” plan design.
The food characteristics, including hygiene, freshness, temperature, and integrity that you need to achieve or protect.
The current production volumes you need to achieve and the future production goals you need to plan for.
Your project budget and timeline

Step 2: Gather Your Documentation

Gather manuals, spec sheets, and CAD drawings for your existing or new process equipment. This includes plant layout and footprint plans, wiring schematics, and packaging requirements.

You’ll need details on what utilities and hookups are needed and where in your facility the existing infrastructure is located. You’ll also need to include the required sanitary standards and best practices that your process is required to meet.

Together, this documentation details the performance limits and physical constraints within which any conveying solution needs to work.

Step 3: Define Your Core Team’s “Must-Haves”

Get your key stakeholders to put their cards on the table up-front. Understanding what features and standards are non-negotiable for your maintenance, safety, quality control, and sanitation teams will save time in the consultation process and simplify key design decisions.

Choosing between true “must-haves” and “nice to haves” is difficult, especially when your teams’ interests come into conflict, or when you need to consider your business’s future needs. Hashing this out now will help deliver a better thought-out solution later.

Step 4: Connect With a Reputable Conveyance Manufacturer

Understanding clearly how you want your conveyor solution to perform allows your equipment provider to make specific recommendations to achieve those goals.

An experienced materials-handling partner can draw on solutions that work across a range of different applications. They can recommend the best option for your product, sanitation needs, and production volume and collaborate with you to design the best solution.

Building an effective sanitary conveyor system is about far more than simply fulfilling an order. To deliver a long-term return on investment, it needs to be an ongoing partnership with a company that understands your product and value proposition.

Providing your equipment manufacturer with clear information upfront will save time and money, reducing pressure from overstretched project managers and engineers.

LOOKING DOWN THE LINE

Your relationship with an equipment manufacturer starts at the design stage but does not end when your equipment is delivered. Your planning team also needs to think about installation, commissioning, training, as well as ongoing maintenance and repair services.

Ordering the best equipment is not enough if it is poorly installed. Not all manufacturers install their equipment. If you are using your own installation team, make sure they are trusted by your conveyor equipment OEM and know how to install and configure your equipment correctly so that it meets safety and hygiene standards.

PFI: YOUR VALUE-ADDED SANITARY CONVEYOR PARTNER

PFI is one of the most respected suppliers of quality sanitary conveyor solutions to the food industry worldwide. With more than 60 years of experience building safe, effective, and durable conveyors for food manufacturers of all types, we offer:

The best products: Our class-leading conveying equipment offers industry-leading performance and features – designed to provide years of reliable service.
The highest sanitary standards: Our precision-built equipment meets and exceeds existing industry benchmarks, including USDA, GMA, BEMA, and FSMA regulations.
Seamless integration: Our equipment is designed to integrate seamlessly with your new or existing OEM manufacturing equipment.

At PFI, we are committed to helping you find the best sanitary conveying solution for your needs, and to working with you at every stage of the design and delivery process.

Click below to learn more about PFI’s industry-leading sanitary conveyors or contact us today to discover how we can put our unparalleled skills and experience to work for you.

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SAVE TIME AND MONEY BY USING FOOD-GRADE CONVEYORS TO DO MORE

Written by Intero Web Division on August 1, 2023.

Food manufacturing companies routinely use conveyors throughout their facilities to move food products along the line to get them processed, packaged, and out to customers.

Value-added conveyors can save time and money – AND produce more significant ROI. Let’s look at how they can help throughout the processing line.

How Value-Added Conveyors Can Help Food Processors

In a food processing plant, conveyors are used to move product around as it proceeds through the various steps of preparation. But, what’s not always considered is that conveying equipment can be enhanced to help complete steps while the product is in motion. This allows plants to perform more efficiently.

To understand how this might be incorporated, think about how a product might be manipulated while moving along on a conveyor. A manufacturer might need to add nuts, for example, or cover something in chocolate.

What Types of Actions Can a Value-Added Conveyor Do?

There’s a conveyor adaptation to fit almost any action that might need to be done to prepare the product for the next stage of the process.

Conveyors can be designed to manipulate the product so it can be ready for the next step in production. This may include completing actions such as:

● Flipping or turning
● Merging and sorting
● Sizing
● Aligning
● Compressing
● Sprinkling an ingredient on top
● Stuffing ingredients inside
● Enrobing/waterfall
● Cutting or chunking

Some of the food industries that might benefit from incorporating value-added conveying equipment include:
● Meat processing
● Candy and confectionery
● Dough processing and handling
● Frozen food
● Pet food
● Snack food
● Bakery

Advantages of Value-Added Conveyance Solutions

What can value-added conveyance solutions mean for a food manufacturing company? There are numerous advantages:

Money saved: When time and labor are saved, cost savings also result. The cost of an optimized conveyor is usually less than a separate machine, meaning it’s more likely to stay within a manufacturer’s budget.

Addressing a worker shortage: Positions in these areas can be hard to fill because the jobs can be repetitive and may be tedious. Turnover is often high. Using value-added conveying solutions helps address this challenge by automating such tasks on the line.

Increased project efficiency: By relying on the conveyor OEMs to figure out the manipulation, it can save time on the part of the manufacturer’s engineering team. In addition, working with fewer suppliers saves project management time. Using less equipment is easier and more streamlined for operations, sanitation, and maintenance.

Improved food safety: Using a machine versus a human worker to complete some steps of the process reduces the potential for products to be contaminated.

Better precision: Conveying equipment aligns the ingredients and portions more precisely than a human can.

Reduced waste: It also results in less waste – an example might be a factory using a procedure that sprinkles nuts on a product. The conveyor can be designed to catch the nuts that fall off, which can then be cycled back into the process instead of discarded.

Smaller footprint: Value-added conveying equipment saves floor space, as well, which impacts the logistics of a factory.

Guidelines for Choosing a Value-Added Conveyor Supplier

For food manufacturers who are considering value-added conveyance solutions, follow these guidelines:

Get a conveying equipment partner involved early: Choose a supplier you can rely on, then get them involved before you make crucial decisions about how to process a food product. The earlier they can get involved, the more efficiency they can bring to your processes.
Ask for an assessment of your production process and facility: Once you’ve chosen a partner to work with in the conveyor equipment space, they can perform an assessment of your production facility. They can then provide recommendations on specific pieces of equipment that can be incorporated based on a food producer’s unique needs. The sooner this is done, the more helpful it may be. It makes processes more efficient, resulting in a smaller footprint.
Consider conveyance technology during process development: If you want to build even more efficiency into your processes, factor conveyance into your process development stage. For example, in-house engineering teams may not think about how a conveyor can add value during food production. By working with a partner in the conveyor space, manufacturers can gain insight that may be helpful in designing their processes.
Choose a supplier who understands the industry applications: When considering a supplier to work with, be sure to choose one with industry experience. A partner that knows food processing applications inside and out saves time spent searching for engineering resources that may be difficult to find. They can easily build on existing solutions or tweak projects as needed to perfect them to fit a new application.
Think about supporting equipment: Once you have the right conveyance equipment in place, consider supporting equipment to create complete conveyance and bulk handling systems. This may include dumpers, platforms, lifts, sanitary parts carts, and elevators.
Add installation and maintenance services: Some conveyance equipment manufacturers also offer installation and maintenance services you can take advantage of. Partnering with your conveyance OEM to install and service equipment streamlines the project by leveraging experts that understand how to integrate it into the line efficiently and accurately.

Value-Added Conveyors Increase Efficiency for Manufacturers

As you develop new products and perfect existing processes, value-added conveyors help you work smarter by enhancing your line while saving on the bottom line.

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Food Conveyor Systems: When to Use Horizontal Motion vs Vibratory

Written by Kimberly on July 19, 2023.

Modern food conveyor systems keep your product clean, safe, and fresh while moving through your facility. Choosing just the right value-added handling technology to match your processing needs can help give your company the edge.

Food-grade horizontal motion and vibratory conveyor systems offer very different solutions to the same problem: moving more products faster and smarter.

Here’s how partnering with an experienced conveyor supplier like PFI can help you put more speed, flexibility, and in-motion processing power on your line and better quality products out on the shelf.

THE RIGHT CONVEYOR FOR YOUR PROCESS

Horizontal motion and vibratory food conveyor systems each offer smart potential solutions to the challenge of transporting food products through your facility safely, efficiently, and cost-effectively.

Turning that potential into real value for your product and bottom-line gains for your company depends on matching the advantages of the right process to your company’s product mix, value proposition, and budget.

Below, we’ll take a close look at the factors that determine which conveying process might work best for your product and company. We’ll consider:

How Do Horizontal Motion Conveyors Work?
How Do Vibratory Conveyors Work?
Horizontal Motion vs. Vibratory Systems
When to Use a Horizontal Motion Conveyor
When to Use a Vibratory Conveyor
Who to Work With to Get the Most Out of Your Food-Grade Conveyor System

HOW DO HORIZONTAL MOTION CONVEYORS WORK?

Food-grade horizontal motion conveyors provide steady, gentle, forward movement that moves food in the desired direction by sliding it down one or more product pans. Horizontal conveyors are powered by advanced computer-controlled servo motors. These motors generate controlled, consistent forward movement while also allowing:

Infinitely variable speed control
Instant motion start/stop
Full motion reversibility

Horizontal motion conveyors combine steady movement with robust, durable construction and are capable of moving products up to 40 feet a minute. Horizontal motion equipment requires a flat or slightly inclined material to move material downhill in a controlled way. It can also move product at a decline and a slight incline, usually not more than a 1-degree upward slope.

Performance

Horizontal motion conveying is also well suited to extreme operating conditions including freezer rooms and processes involving the harshest wash-down and sterilization procedures.

The higher-quality direct-drive horizontal motion conveyors built by PFI are limited in length to about 20 feet per unit. Multiple units can convey material for distances of up to 60-80 feet, but the cost of moving material per line foot is higher. Some manufacturers can build longer units, but these require large mechanical drives which adds to maintenance costs and downtime.

Horizontal motion conveyors can also be run in reverse. This is very useful when slowing or reversing the line is required, allowing, for instance, the product to be held up without stopping the line so that bagging film can be replaced.

The steady forward movement of horizontal motion equipment also makes it easier to inspect material on the line. It also helps to keep mixed products together ahead of separation and packaging through a proportion gate.

Horizontal conveyors offer quieter mechanical operation than other transfer or handling solutions, although this also depends on the material you are handling.

Sanitation

The sealed direct drive servo motors used on leading units like PFI’s PURmotion horizontal conveyor equipment protect the most sensitive mechanical components while making more of the unit’s moving parts visible and accessible. Simple design and smooth, threadless construction reduce harboring opportunities and allow easy cleaning and sanitization.

Maintenance

Smart design also makes maintenance easier, while drop-in or toolless replacement of more parts becomes possible. Horizontal motion conveyors can operate faultlessly for many years although key parts like bushings need to be replaced every few years — or more often for conveyors operating in harsh applications.

Cost

Horizontal motion conveyors feature a more sophisticated design and offer greater control over production motion and speed. The up-front expense of design, customization, and installation of horizontal motion equipment tends to be higher than vibratory equipment, but maintenance costs over time are generally lower.

HOW DO VIBRATORY CONVEYORS WORK?

Food-grade vibratory conveyors are driven by mechanical or electromagnetic drives that generate side-to-side agitation along the line. Depending on the product you’re moving, these can be:

Long-stroke, lower-frequency mechanical drives for slower, more gentle agitation, or
Short-stroke high-frequency electromagnetic drives for faster, more aggressive motion.

This makes vibratory conveyors a flexible solution for a wide range of food-processing applications. Longer-cycling mechanical drives are used when a product can be moved more slowly or to protect fragile foodstuffs, while higher-frequency electromagnetic drives are used to provide aggressive agitation or to move lighter foodstuffs more quickly.

Performance

Leading equipment providers like PFI offer conveyors capable of moving at up to 55 feet a minute, although this depends on both the nature of the foodstuffs and the type of drives used by a vibratory conveyor. PFI’s vibratory equipment limits its vibratory conveyors to a maximum length of 22 feet per unit with multiple units used to achieve longer lengths. Pan width varies based on product rates and density.

Vibratory conveyors are a tried-and-true conveying solution that provides great flexibility in where and how they can be installed. Vibratory equipment also offers the ability to move product down relatively steep inclines and up slopes as steep as 7º.

Vibratory conveyors also adapt well to harsh environments, including both hot and freezing conditions. Vibratory equipment tends to be noisier than horizontal motion equipment, but, again, this is determined mainly by the material being handled.