Alfa Laval Casestudy

Alfa Laval has had the privilege to co-operate with many excellent companies and participate in many great projects around the world. We want to share this experience with you and show how our customers have realized their visions.

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Coffee & Tea

Powder for Gourmets
If you think “powdered” food means a pale imitation of real flavors, you haven’t tasted the products of Sato Foods industries. But if you’ve ever been to Japan, you almost surely have.

The headquarters of Sato Foods Industries Co. Ltd. outside Nagoya in central Japan are located in a typical Japanese industrial area: building after similar building stretching across an uninteresting, flat expanse of reclaimed land – but at least everything is uniformly neat and tidy (this being Japan, of course).

The destination at first seems much the same, a typical white five story office building standing before several more industrial-looking buildings. Workers in sanitary white caps and pristine blue uniforms scuttle from building to building.

The soft fronds of palm trees surrounding the entrance, however, suggest that things might be a little different in the headquarters. It’s a first impression borne out by the cordial Irrashaimase! – “Welcome!” – from every employee, and the pots of orchids and other flowers at the exit from the lift on each floor.

“Raising my tropical flowers and talking with the young people –that’s what I like best of all,” says Sato Foods Chairman Jinichi Sato with a smile, settling back into a meeting-room sofa. At 79, the Chairman is still very much involved in the running of the company he founded in 1954, and fiercely proud of the technologies he either initially created, or set the path for later development by his research team.

Convenient tea-making

“Almost everyone in the country has eaten or drunk what we make, ” Mr. Sato says. The company is one of Japan’s leading producers of powdered extracts – black and green teas, seasonings, soup bases, soy sauce, and, perhaps its most unusual creation, powdered alcohol products.

Almost everything is sold in bulk to other food manufacturers or retailers, “So very few consumers actually know our name, “Mr. Sato says. “We have always tried to create something that tastes better than what the average person can make,” he explains. “For example, ocha – green tea – is hard to make well from leaf. You have to warm the pot, add hot water, and the taste changes very quickly depending on the temperature and water quantity. Powder is convenient, compact, it’s stable and the flavour doesn’t change.”

Servings of tea regularly supplied during the interview by the smiling staff are just what Mr. Sato says: consistent in flavour from cup to cup, and without the bitterness often found in the quickly-made cups inevitably served to guests in offices and homes. But Mr. Sato is aiming even higher. “Powder has the image of being inferior, but I want to create high-quality products that have true, natural flavour. I want to bring it to the level where it tastes as good as something created by a professional.”

The same every time

Exactly how Sato Foods has succeeded in capturing natural flavours in powdered form is closely guarded technology. Eight spray towers stand at the company’s two plants in the area and Mr Sato describes the process in simple terms. Liquid materials are sprayed from the top of the towers at carefully-controlled temperatures and airflow that turn the fine mist into powder in just a fraction of a second. There are viewing ports on the sides of the towers, but after some discussion it is decided that even the glimpse these allow is best not shared with outsiders.

Chairman Jinichi Sato conveniently prepares a cup of green tea.“Each of the eight drying towers is different.” Mr. Sato acknowledges. “We tell the construction people what we want done inside – add a duct here, put some pipes over there. It takes hundreds of tries and hours of research to find the best way to dry something. Any tiny change in any of many factors – the heat, the cooling air, the shape of the nozzles – will have an effect on the results. This is why we are increasingly dependent on automation to ensure that everything is exactly the same every time.”

Because of this insistence on quality, Sato Foods Industries is the leading producer of powered ocha in the country. Its No. 2 Factory, completed in 2000, was built solely for the production of powdered teas, in particular ocha. “There are just a few others trying to do this, but they have almost all met with failure,” Mr. Sato says with more than a touch of pride.

A visit to the factory, about a 20-minute drive from the headquarters, shows the automation which ensures that the tea produced tastes the same all day and every day. Only about a dozen workers, in near clean-room conditions are required to oversee everything from the making of the base tea itself to the spray drying, gathering of the powder and packaging for shipment.

Carefully selected equipment

Unlike most Japanese manufacturers, Sato Foods Industries uses its own engineers when constructing new facilities. “This means that we don’t just set a budget and schedule and then turn everything over to the contractors,” says Akifumi Yoshimatsu, Managing Director and the man responsible for technical decisions. “Instead, we very carefully select what equipment we want used, and how things are to be built.

We wanted world class quality in everything, and this is one reason why we insisted on Alfa Laval valves, heat exchangers and clarifiers (sparklingly clear tea being, of course, a necessity). We also are involved in more and more international business and wanted the factory to demonstrate our readiness.”

The fun of it

“Products like Alfa Laval’s are our weapons,” adds Mr. Sato. “We need the best.” Another sign of this focus quality is the strict adherence at the plant to the HACCP (Hazard Analysis Critical Control Points) system originally developed by NASA in the US to ensure the safety of food for astronauts.

While ocha is about half of the business today, in fact it was in humble soy sauce where the company began. “I studied ceramics at university,” Mr. Sato says, but like everyone after the war I was hungry! So I went into the food business.” After a short stint as a researcher, Mr. Sato began what he calls “fun” research into a clear soy sauce that, after much trial and error and some disappointments, was eagerly accepted by cracker makers in Tokyo. A later request by a customer for a dried soy sauce lead to the field where he would be even more successful. “They though I was this bright scientist from Kyoto University, but I hadn’t even seen a drier!” he recalls.

The challenge of the task lured him on, first to success in food flavourings, then in the 1960s to a true world’s first: powdered alcohol. “It was the fun of doing it that kept me going,” he says. He found a combination of a sugar with alcohol resulted in a powder that somehow holds onto the alcohol during drying while the water is removed.

Magic formula

To illustrate the point, a member of staff brings in a series of beakers containing a fine grey-white powder. The Chairman takes the helm, mixing the powders about half and half with water. “Red wine!” he beams. “Brandy!” And, in fact, they are entirely drinkable – and fully alcoholic – beverages. “It’s not a big product for us,” Mr. Sato admits, “but cake makers and others find it a great way to get natural alcohol flavours without needing the storage space for liquid.”

At an age where most people have long since retired, Mr. Sato’s thoughts are very much with the challenges of the future. “I see things like powdered salad dressing that you can just sprinkle on,” he says. “I want to make a top-quality soy sauce so you can sprinkle it on sushi, instead of dipping into liquid. We just have to study more. It’s interesting, because it’s difficult!”

With this spirit of enjoyable inquiry firmly established at the company, it will be interesting to see in the future what kinds of delicious powders do emerge from those secret spray towers.


Alfa Laval / Sato Foods cooperation

To achieve what Sato Foods Industries’ founder and Chairman Jinichi Sato calls the ideal mix of “technology and art” that results in delicious products and good business results, his company has applied both human skills and world-class equipment in building their new Number 2 Factory in 2000.

The people power came from the company’s 20 R & D staff who figure out the ideal factors to make foods taste and look good after being transformed into powder and later reconstituted with water.

The equipment includes a number of key products from Alfa Laval, of which the plate heat exchangers and the clarifier are supplied through Tetra Pak. The equipment provides precise control of temperature and other factors to ensure the same top level of quality all day and every day.

As Mr. Sato noted, temperature is a key factor in ensuring the optimum flavour when making tea. Sato Foods uses Alfa Laval M-series plate heat exchangers to ensure very fine control of product temperature before drying and, with the plant producing 1,000 tons of dried tea annually, the heat exchangers have to provide outstanding efficiency.

Before the concentration stage, a VNPX clarifier is used to remove solids from the liquid. This is a critical step in ensuring that exactly the right, small amount of solids is kept in the product in order to create the impression of fresh ‘home-made’ tea.

Finally, to move the liquids through the various processes on the way to the transformation in the highly-confidential drying towers, Sato Foods has installed a number of Alfa Laval SRC remotely-controlled valves and other sanitary valves for precise, optimum product flow.

“Our Key Account Management concept is critical for customers such as Sato Foods,” says Atsushi Sekigawa, Sales Manager for Sanitary Equipment at Alfa Laval in Tokyo. “This allows us to provide full support to the customer in a single approach.”


 

Fruit & Vegetable Preparations

Citrosuco's juice plant in Brazil
At Citrosuco’s factory in Mattão, Brazil, 100,000 oranges are processed every minute. At that speed they need processes that keep running at peak performance.

There are parts of Brazil that few tourists ever get to see. Far away from the tropical beaches and rainforests are the vast hinterlands of the interior. In much of the country’s north and northeast, these are arid semi-deserts, tough and inhospitable. But in the south and southeast, Brazil’s interior contains some of the most fertile farmlands on the planet.

”It’s a mixture of soil and climate,” says Sérgio Moretti, production manager at Citrosuco, one of the world’s biggest producers of concentrated and fresh orange juice. “It’s that deep red earth, and plenty of sun all year round, plus a little bit of cold in the winter.”

Citrosuco is based in Mattão, about four hours’ drive north of São Paulo city. This is orange grove and sugarcane country. Further south and east, the same vein of rich soil is used for a wider variety of crops such as soy and corn. Where the altitude permits, especially further to the west, the main crop is coffee.

It’s an amazingly productive area, that has enough orange trees to make the state of São Paulo the world’s biggest producer of both oranges and orange juice, with about 40% of global production. The state of Florida in the southern United States comes second with about 30%, and the rest is shared between smaller producing countries.

100,000 oranges a minute

Some of the groves around Mattão belong to Citrosuco. The company produces about one quarter of the oranges it uses, on farms covering more than a million hectares. It buys the rest from independent growers. At its two factories – one in Mattão, the other in Limeira, about an hour and a half’s drive away – Citrosuco’s juice extractors process 100,000 oranges per minute. That’s enough to make about two thousand tons of finished products each and every working day.

If you’re able to form a mental picture of that many oranges and that much orange juice, it should come as no surprise to learn that Citrosuco’s factory in Mattão is the biggest of its kind in the world.

Sérgio Moretti is in charge of both factories, overseeing production processes, maintenance, efficiency, quality, costs and all the data and day-to-day details. About one hundred people work at the Limeira factory and 300 at Mattão, which is where we went to see him on a crisp and sunny winter’s morning.

The Mattão factory dominates the small town. Seen from the outside, the factory looks more like a small oil refinery. Evaporation towers and other mysterious-looking volumes are linked by mile upon mile of piping, all stainless steel, glinting in the sun. The company started in 1963 as a family business trading in fresh fruit. It later went into water-borne transport, but for years now has focused on and invested heavily in orange juice.

Focus on export

Very little of that juice goes to the local market due to the easy access to fresh fruit throughout the country and the fact that “carton orange juice” is an expensive product by the standards of the Brazilian market. “Instead of buying ready-to-drink juice, most Brazilians buy fresh oranges cheaply by the dozen and squeeze them at home. Walk into any corner bar and ask for an orange juice, and it will be squeezed to order”, says Sérgio Moretti.

The export market is what matters to Citrosuco. It sells almost all of its output overseas, currently exporting to markets in 40 different countries worldwide. Long-established markets such as those in European countries have come close to saturation point in recent years and Citrosuco, along with its competitors, is working to open new markets in Asia and other regions. The market of the moment is China. Brazilian are especially strong in China, making up two thirds of what is now the world’s fastest growing market.

It’s a business where companies have to keep innovating if they want to keep growing. Producing orange juice may sound like the sort of activity that doesn’t change much down the years, but in fact customer demands change rapidly. As a consequence, Citrosuco must invest to keep ahead of the competition.

Customized production

The basic extraction process is quite simple. Oranges are fed into machines five at a time, then pierced from below and pressed to extract the juice. This takes just one second. (There are 180 machines at Mattão.) From these extractors, the juice goes into centrifuges, where pulp and any other particles are extracted. From there, the juice goes into evaporating towers, where its volume is reduced to produce the concentrate that makes up the majority of Citrosuco’s sales.

This, of course, is a crude outline, and there are many variants depending on customers’ demands. Citrosuco recently began supplying Tropicana, the world’s biggest brand of “fresh” orange juice, for which it produces unconcentrated juice. Instead of going to the evaporating towers, the juice is pasteurised and kept aseptically until it reaches consumers around the world.

Ultrafiltration modules for juice clarification“We’re always looking for new products, and we’re in constant contact with customers to try to develop something new, to find a new solution to their needs,” says Sérgio. One recent example involved working closely with Alfa Laval to modify the characteristics of a solid orange juice concentrate used in the soft drinks industry. This concentrate is extracted from the pulp and other material taken from the juice by the centrifuges. “The juice extracted at this stage has a high level of limonin, which gives it a bitter taste,” Sérgio explains. Using ultrafiltration technology developed at Alfa Laval, Citrosuco was able to remove the bitterness from the concentrate and provide the right product for its customers.

All down the production chain there are by-products. The pulp and other solid residues are turned into pellets, which are then used in making cattle feed. Another by-product of the pressing stage is orange oil, contained in orange peel. This is extracted in centrifuges and sold overseas to flavour houses for use in the food and cosmetics industries. Orange essence is also extracted at the evaporation stage, for use in food and drinks.

As Sérgio talks, it becomes clear that his is a deeply involving job. “I really like the large variation of activities,” he says. “The basic process is oranges in, orange juice out, but things change every day. The quality and type of oranges are always changing, which means constant changes in technology, and new processes coming along. There’s a new challenge every day.”


Fruitful cooperation

The relationship between Alfa Laval and Citrosuco began when Alfa Laval bought Danish Separation Systems in 2002.

 In 1996, the company had supplied Citrosuco with an ultrafiltration plant for orange juice clarification after extraction.

Recent changes to the extraction process meant that the juice passing through the filters had a higher concentration of peel oil than before.

The oil in the finished concentrate had to be kept to a minimum to meet the needs of Citrosuco’s customers; soft drink manufacturers in this case. In addition, peel oil is very aggressive to most polymers. As a result, the support plates of the ultrafiltration plant deteriorated, causing leaks and product losses.

“The oil was basically destroying part of our equipment,” says Sérgio Moretti, Citrosuco’s production manager. “The ultrafiltration membranes were still OK, but the oil was breaking down the support plates.”

These are massive machines. The membranes on their support plates sit in long rows and the juice is forced through them down steel tubes. After that, a resin on the membrane attracts the orange oil and removes it from the juice.

When the support plates began to corrode, Citrosuco had to make a decision. It could replace the entire ultrafiltration plant, buying a new system from another manufacturer using highly resistant ceramic plates; or it could stick with Alfa Laval, and work together to produce new support plates in a sufficiently resistant material.

“Alfa Laval’s people came over and worked with our people on a series of tests and experiments,” Sérgio says. Between them, Alfa Laval’s and Citrosuco’s engineers developed support plates in a material able to resist the oil-rich juice. Alfa Laval has now upgraded all 16 modules at Citrosuco, with a total membrane area of 840 square meters.

The success of the project led Citrosuco and Alfa Laval to sign a five-year service agreement to keep the machines running at peak performance. Under the agreement, Alfa Laval will provide regular service visits, give advice on optimizing the filtration process and undertake training of Citrosuco personnel. The deal also includes lead-time guarantees on maintenance. “The plant is working much better,” Sérgio says. “This is the kind of relationship we like to build, based on the needs of our customers.”

Mixing smoothies with Rotary jet mixer technology

Mixing smoothies with Rotary jet mixer technology

THE SERIOUS FOOD COMPANY, UNITED KINGDOM. This British producer of juice, desserts and smoothies faced the challenge of quickly achieving a stable and homogeneous mixture of high-viscosity fruit purées and fresh-pressed high-fibre juice. By equipping three 15-m3 tanks with two Alfa Laval rotary jet mixers each, the dairy quickly achieved stable, homogeneous mixtures. This cost-effective design with low maintenance costs which resulted in a savings of 12,000 EUR per tank.

Mixing smoothies

The challenge when mixing smoothies is to obtain a stable and homogeneous mixture of high-viscosity fruit purées and the fresh-pressed high-fibre juice.

Client

British company the Serious Food Company, producer of juice, desserts and smoothies.

Problem

The Serious Food Company wanted a system that, in a just few minutes, could blend smoothies to a homogeneous and stable mixture. They were facing problems with unacceptable mixing times since it took a long time to obtain a homo- geneous mix of high-viscosity fruit purées and fresh-pressed high-fibre juice. They also found it difficult to clean the tanks after batch production.

Solution

Three tanks, each with a volume of 15m3, were equipped with two Alfa Laval Iso-Mix Rotary jet mixers. The rotating nozzles on the Rotary jet mixers reach the entire tank volume, resulting in fast and efficient mixing. The complete system is made up of a recirculation loop that feeds the Iso-Mix rotary jet mixer and takes the tank contents from the tank bottom through a boost pump and back into the Rotary jet mixer.

Result

Rotary jet mixer technology proved to be considerably faster than traditional methods, which resulted in greater profit margins. By installing the Iso-Mix rotary jet mixers in the tanks, the Serious Food Company obtained a more cost-effective plant design with low maintenance costs and higher sanitary levels in the tanks since the Rotary jet mixer can also be used for cleaning the empty tank (CIP).

Facts

• Savings of 12,000 EUR per tank

• Homogeneous and stable mixture

• Fast and efficient cleaning of the empty tank (CIP)

System data

• System data
• Volume: 15 m3
• Tank diameter: 1.88 m
• Tank height: 5.22 m
• Mixer type: IM 15 with 4 x 8 mm nozzles
• Temperature: 5°C
• Pressure, pump: 2–5 bar
• Viscosity: 1– 8000 cP (end-product 20– 300 cP)

The Alfa Laval rotary jet mixer has either two or four rotating jet nozzles positioned under the liquid surface at the top of the tank. A variable speed pump circulates the liquid to be mixed through the tank in a closed loop system. The resulting flow drives a gearing system in the rotary jet mixer, which causes the nozzles to rotate around both the horizontaland vertical axes.

This double rotation enables the jets to produce
mixing action and extend its reach throughout the
entire tank volume. This results in fast and efficient
mixing of the injected liquid, gas or powder. The rotary
jet mixer may also be used for cleaning the tank;
cleaning fluids are then fed through the nozzles of
the rotary jet mixer into the tank.


 

Soft Drink

Integrator ensures cost-effective hygienic solutions using Alfa Laval equipment
As subsidiary of the one of the largest breweries in the world, Carlsberg Sverige AB teams up with integrator Falkenbergs Rör to optimize the performance of its plant using Alfa Laval equipment.

Sweden’s largest brewery Carlsberg Sverige AB is redefining mutually beneficial business relationships. Falkenbergs Rör (Falkenberg Pipes Ltd) has been providing Carlsberg with Alfa Laval equipment for the past decade, first as a pipe and component installer and now as an integrator.

About 80% of all equipment installed in the Carlsberg plant is Alfa Laval equipment due to 30 years of collaboration with the equipment and solutions provider. With excellent support from both partners, Carlsberg is able to focus on its core business, boosting productivity and profitability while relying on Falkenbergs Rör to ensure high operating efficiency.

Easy to do business with

What started out as tightly knit threesome with Carlsberg as a common client of Alfa Laval as equipment provider and Falkenbergs Rör as system installer has evolved over the years, with Falkenbergs Rör gradually taking on the role of integrator.

“From the basics of pipe and component installation and emergency services, we took over increasingly more  responsibility as Carlsberg’s operations expanded,” says Jesper Johansson, department manager for industry, at Falkenbergs Rör. “Now we are responsible for the cost-effective supply and maintenance of Carlberg’s process installations.”

“Ours is a very unique business relationship. It is easy to do business with a partner who knows the plant so well,” says Thomas Hedman, technical manager at Carlsberg. “With the pressures on uptime and profitability, it is a relief to know that we can count on fast turnaround for Alfa Laval components and same day installation, if required.”

Safe and hygienic uptime

The plant runs three eight-hour continuous batch shifts, producing 170 million litres of beer and 110 million litres of water, soft drinks and cider each year. Because Alfa Laval is a preferred supplier, Alfa Laval LKH pumps, Unique mixproof valves, ThinkTop valve sensing and control units and tank cleaning machines are mainstays throughout Carlsberg production lines and contribute by getting the most out of the raw materials.

“Hygiene, reliability and low maintenance are ‘musts’,” says Hedman emphatically. “We trust Alfa Laval equipment for all three and know from experience that we can increase equipment service intervals beyond the recommended  intervals but still maintain high equipment availability and keep costs low.”

Integrator Falkenbergs Rör also contributes to increasing uptime by ensuring stable plant operations. While Carlsberg keeps a small onsite inventory of essential spare parts, the plant also has easy access to a broad selection of genuine spare parts.

“If it’s not on our shelves or at Falkenbergs Rör, whatever we need is never far away at Alfa Laval Kolding, Denmark.”

In addition, Falkenbergs Rör employees contribute to uptime in an unusual way. “Sometimes when staff calls in sick, the guys at Falkenbergs Rör step in to help out,” admits Hedman with a chuckle. “They know the production lines just as well if not better than our own guys.”

Greater energy savings

Over the years, Carlsberg has worked closely with Falkenbergs Rör and Alfa Laval to reduce energy expenditures and streamline productivity. Long before the EU Energy Efficiency Directive was endorsed, Carlsberg had its eye on increasing plant-wide energy efficiency, reducing waste and emissions.

“As a 2008 U.N. Global Compact signatory, the Carlsberg Group launched a company-wide energy efficiency programme, which among other things called for the use of low-energy motors in all new installations,” confides Hedman. “With energy consumption representing 95% of the total life-cycle costs for a pump, it was in our best interests to reduce pump energy consumption.”

A broad selection of Alfa Laval LKH centrifugal pumps, from LKH-5 to LKH-90, are installed at the Falkenberg plant and handle the various flow rates required depending on where they are located. These offer about 30% in energy savings compared to similar mid-range pumps. “Plus when the valve matrices are properly designed and installed, which they are, we don’t use more energy for the pumps than necessary,” adds Hedman.

Reduced environmental impact with Alfa Laval equipment

Beyond the production lines, Carlsberg is taking additional steps to reduce its overall environmental impact and energy consumption. For instance, if the need for increased production capacity arises, Hedman plans to introduce Alfa Laval Rotary Jet Mixers to the plant. These are currently in use at the Carlsberg Northampton plant in the U.K. and have boosted production capacity by 44% while minimizing energy consumption.

“When that time comes, we look forward to working out the details with Falkenbergs Rör to bring these Alfa Laval subsystems online at the plant and ensure a smooth transition to greater productivity,” says Hedman.

Land of processing opportunity
In the midst of India’s formidable economic boom, the country is emerging as one of the world’s biggest food-producing nations. Food processing is now one of its largest industries, and growth is predicted to accelerate in coming years.

Not long ago, India conjured up images of poverty and starvation, but the country has seen vast change in recent decades. Today the country ranks as the world’s second- largest food producer, surpassed only by China, and there is much more to come.

Some say India is on track to become the global food power nation of the future, although a lot still needs to be done to realize this vision.

With close to 184 million hectares of arable land, India’s food industry is largely based on primary production. Each year about 601 million tonnes of food stuffs are grown, primarily milk, grains, livestock, fruit and vegetables. India is the world’s largest producer of milk and livestock and is also big in the areas of fish and poultry.

Despite its vast resources, India contributes just 1.5 percent of the international food trade. Of its vast amount of agricultural produce, only about 2 percent is processed. Baboo M Nair, professor emeritus at the Department of Applied Nutrition and Food Chemistry at Lund University in southern Sweden, says, “Like many agriculture-based economies, between 60 and 70 percent of the labour force [in India] generates its livelihood from agriculture, but farming only contributes about 25 percent of GDP.

Productivity in the agro-food sector is very low. One reason is that farmers mainly supply raw materials or low-cost products for the domestic market. There is, therefore, great potential to develop value-added products for export.”

One of India’s leading industries

Food processing is one way to add value and shelf life to products. It covers a relatively broad spectrum of methods, such as grading, extraction, concentration, heat treatment, storing and packaging. Packaging and storage are in themselves a huge problem in India:

One estimate suggests as much as 30 percent of India’s crops is wasted due to limited storage and food processing facilities. While the level of food processing remains low in India by international standards, the industry has seen steady growth in recent years, and it now ranks as one of India’s leading industries. This development has been supported by government initiatives, market liberalization and demographic factors.

Dharmendra Shukla, senior manager, Beverages and Viscous Food at Alfa Laval India, says, “A lot of government initiatives have aimed to improve economic conditions for farmers. One way of doing this is through food processing, which has been one of the prioritized industries. We are seeing food parks emerging as well as a lot of subsidies and grants going into the sector.”

Rapid urbanization is also supporting the shift to processed food. India’s double-digit economic growth during the past decade hasSupermarkets are replacing roadside stands in India.transformed the lives of hundreds of thousands of Indians and led to an emerging middle class. Not long ago, most of India’s food trade took place at roadside stands. Today, retailing is growing rapidly, and supermarkets are opening in the cities to cater for the new class structure. Organized retail trade has been increasing by an average of 45 percent per year in recent years, according to the Indian Federation of Indian Chambers of Commerce and Industry (FICCI).

“The booming technology business in India has been another important contributing factor,” says Shukla. “The IT industry has brought a lot of purchasing power to this country.”

Growing interest in the food sector

The FICCI estimates that 300 million people in India consume processed food today, with a further 200 million expected to do so by 2010. That still leaves an untapped market of close to 1,000 million people.

The strong growth in the food processing industry of recent years is only expected to accelerate. The government, whose figures indicate the sector value will triple in size by 2015, is targeting an increase in the level of perishable-food processing from 6 percent to 20 percent, and a doubling of India’s share of global food trade to 3 percent. Getting there will require, among other measures, new investment in technology and infrastructure.

In a press statement in December, in which it called for tax breaks and alleviations in VAT duties to stimulate the sector, the FICCI argued, “The processed-food segment should be able to grow by more than 10 percent annually, driven by consumer demand, organized distribution and policy initiatives taken by the government.”

This spells a lot of opportunities in the sector, both for investors and companies. Nair, who is organizing an inter-national seminar on networking for building strategic alliances between small and medium-sized food and bio-tech companies, says interest in the sector is growing. “We are likely to see change,” he says. “We have already seen a lot of private interests going into the food processing industry, and it is a sector with many opportunities.

“The food industry in India is still focused on low-cost products, but it is developing in the right direction. One way is to work with strategic alliances and networking that benefit not only Indian companies but also international ones. Pension funds could invest in India’s agro-food and bio-tech industries with good return on a long-term basis, provided there is also some cooperation in the field of research, technology and education.”

Dairy, wheat, fruit and vegetables are considered the segments with the greatest potential. Today, about 2 percent of the total fruit and vegetable harvest is processed, accounting for about 1.5 percent of the total food processing industry. That share is expected to rise to 10 percent by 2010 and to 15 percent by 2015.

The combined installed processing capacity for fruit and vegetables more than doubled between 1993 and 2007, from 1.1 million tonnes to 2.5 million tonnes. Shukla says, “Only five to 10 years ago most of the juices, concentrates and preserves were produced manually, and investors were reluctant to put money into the food processing industry. Now, everyone wants to be part of it.”


Great technology demand

The boom in India’s food processing industry has created a huge need for new and efficient solutions to heat, cool, sterilize, extract, concentrate, separate and transport food stuffs.

Further investments in technology and equipment will be needed if India is to realize its ambitions for food export. It was not that long ago that almost all India’s food trade took place at roadside stands, but that is changing as well.

On the domestic front, the rise in retail shopping and the emergence of supermarkets are driving investment in refrigeration, packaging and cooling-system solutions. The latter is of particular importance, as solutions here can help alleviate the problem of post-harvest waste.

Alfa Laval has been a key supplier to the Indian food processing industry for many years. Its separation, heating, cooling, refrigeration and fluid-handling equipment and solutions are used in the production of dairy products, fruit-based products and beverages, vegetable oil, beer and starch, but also in the wine, fish and meat-processing industries.

Fermentation & Maturation

Brewing a better yeast propagation process
Knowing a better yeast handling solution was needed to improve the efficiency of brewing Big Eddy beer, the Leinenkugel engineering team reached out to Alfa Laval for consultation. As a result, the Alfa Laval magnetic mixer was specifically engineered into the 10th Street Brewery’s yeast propagation tank to handle their process’ unique challenges.

A heritage of excellence
For six generations, the Leinenkugel family from Chippewa Falls, Wisconsin has been brewing America’s friendliest craft beer. Under the guidance of Jake, Dick and John Leinenkugel, the brewery continues to thrive, keeping true to the history and heritage established by their great-great grandfather more than 145 years ago.

To accommodate the growth of craft brewing seen in the 1990s, Leinenkugel’s added a second small brewery to their operations in 1995. The 10th Street Brewery in Milwaukee, Wisconsin now helps to handle the increased demand of a growing number of fans – and with more than 350,000 card-carrying “Leinie Lodge” members, demand remains high.

A delicious secret at the 10th Street Brewery
The 10th Street Brewery produces an ever-evolving family of beers, including Leinenkugel’s Big Eddy series of premium craft beers, featuring styles like Wee Heavy Scotch Ale, Baltic Porter, Russian Imperial Stout and Imperial IPA. Leinenkugel creates each of these complex, high-end styles from dozens of ingredients, along with a secret yeast culture referred to as “007.” The outcome is highly flavorful beers with higher than normal alcohol by volume (ABV) of around 10%.

The challenges of specialty craft beers
As part of the brewing process, yeast is added to unfer-mented wort to begin fermentation. This process is referred to as “pitching yeast.” For many types of beers, yeast can simply be reused or “re-pitched” from batch to batch. However, the very high ABV of the Big Eddy series results in a more stressful fermentation process and low yeast viability at the end of fermentation. As a result, the yeast cannot be serially re-pitched, but instead must be freshly propagated for each batch.

Stirring up a better solution
Knowing a better yeast handling solution was needed to improve the efficiency of brewing Big Eddy beer, the Leinenkugel engineering team reached out to Alfa Laval for consultation. As a result, the Alfa Laval magnetic mixer was specifically engineered into the 10th Street Brewery’s yeast propagation tank to handle their process’ unique challenges.

Leinenkugel’s uses a vessel with a top-mounted agitator to propagate the yeast. Once the agitator is operating, a perforated pipe introduces gas to support propagation. Beer is produced as a by-product of this process. However, Leinenkugel’s does not want to dilute the Big Eddy’s wort with this by-product beer due to it’s lower alcohol content and flavor profile, so they allow the yeast to sediment and then decant the beer off. The resulting yeast slurry can have a consistency above 70% spin-down solids.

The Alfa Laval Magnetic Mixer UltraPure stirs this thick yeast slurry to keep it homogeneous, and to control its temperature until it can be pitched into the fermenter. Due to its levitated design, the mixer is easy to clean between batches, and thanks to its bottom-mount location, the mixer stirs the slurry effectively even at low volumes – helping to efficiently drain the tank as a secondary benefit. These results also show that the mixer is suitable for other production challenges, such as mixing in yeast brinks.

Tapping into savings on yeast
In the past, they purchased a liquid yeast culture for pitching but now by propagating their own yeast in-house, they have realized substantial cost savings. According to Greg Walter, Master Brewer/Facility Manager of Leinenkugel’s, these savings are significant. “Instead of costing roughly $3,000 to pitch yeast, it now only costs a few hundred dollars per batch,” said Greg.

He added, “The ‘007’ yeast is so thick and viscous that if we didn’t have the Alfa Laval mixer, we simply couldn’t drain the yeast propagation tank properly.” While the benefits of homogeneous mixing and temperature control play a key role in the Big Eddy series’ production, Greg sums up why it all matters: “We’re most proud of the fact that the Big Eddy series incorporates the most and highest quality of ingre-dients, and is really the most valuable craft beer in the entire Leinenkugel family of beers.” Alfa Laval is proud to play a small but important part in their brewing success!

Carlsberg: Faster, more consistent beer fermentation with Iso-Mix
The need to continually improve all aspects of its brewing process without compromising its famous quality lead Carlsberg’s Fredericia brewery in Denmark to look at the potential of Alfa Laval’s Iso-Mix rotary mixing technology for beer fermentation.

The Danish brewery became one of the first breweries in the world to install the Iso-Mix system including an external heat exchanger on four surplus 5,000 hl cold storage tanks converting them to fermentation vessels.

Faster fermentation and cooling plus energy savings

For Carlsberg, the introduction of the Iso-Mix rotary jet mixing technology has, depending on the type of beer being brewed, cut down the fermentation time to diacetyl acceptance by 1-2 days. In addition, the cooling process is now reduced from 24 to 36 hours to only 12 hours. Peter Rasmussen says that the Iso-Mix technology combined with the heat exchangers has led to “energy and time savings” and the fermentation is now “a more consistent process.”

Quality secured

“We have the capability to secure quality better than that of old fashioned beer making,” Peter Rasmussen adds. “Because the Iso-Mix system employs an external plate heat exchanger, we now have more precise control of the fermenting process, and the temperature can be more accurately controlled.” He also confirms that there is greater homogeneity in the suspension of yeast in the wort and that no additional stress on the yeast has been noted.

Less stabilizer

As an added benefit, Carlsberg has also demonstrated that the Iso-Mix system can be used to add stabilizing ingredients in the unitanks, thereby providing more contact time than if dosed before the filter. This has enabled Carlsberg to cut down on stabilizer usage.

Flexibility and ease of installation

Furthermore, the system has given Carlsberg some extra flexibility by allowing the tanks to be used for production of small batches, something that was not possible previously.

 


 

Yeast Management

Royal Unibrew increases capacity through more efficient fermentation
Increasing capacity was the driving factor behind the decision for Danish brewing company, Royal Unibrew, to invest in Alfa Laval’s Iso-Mix rotary mixing technology. Following a series of trials, the brewery installed the Iso-Mix system in six of its 5,000 hectolitre fermentation vessels at its Faxe plant, making it one of the first companies to adopt the technology for beer fermentation.

The Faxe plant has noted dramatic time savings in the fermentation process thanks to the Iso-Mix technology – up to 40% for the stronger beer types.

Jens Erik Klemmensen, Brewery Manager at Faxe, notes that this faster fermentation has been accompanied by improved quality, “thanks to the consistent fermentation each and every time.” In conventional fermentation tanks, there is no forced mixing of the wort and yeast. But as tanks have grown in size and capacity this means that yeast contact with the fermentable sugars is reduced and fermentation is less efficient.

Where the traditional process often led to very long process times in excess of 20 days, the introduction of the Iso-Mix system led to a much more consistent process time. Thus, the variation in process time measured by the standard deviation was reduced from 9.1 to 1.6 days. The Brewery Manager adds that shorter, more consistent fermentation makes it much easier to follow the plans in the bottling section and to predict what to brew.

According to Jens Erik Klemmensen the brewery has seen higher yeast viabilities of the yeast crop than was previously the case.

Improved yeast management

Since these Iso-Mix systems were installed in 2008, the Faxe plant has extended their application to eight yeast storage tanks.

Jens Erik Klemmensen emphasizes that, “it is crucial that we get homogeneous yeast slurry to be sure to dose the correct amount of yeast.” Using the Iso-Mix system, that is exactly what the brewery gets, along with improved microbiological quality in the yeast storage tanks.

The company also appreciates the fact that one and the same system combines fermentation or yeast storage with efficient and cost-effective CIP tank cleaning.

Mixed-up beer at Carlsberg, UK
Since the Carlsberg Northampton brewery installed the Iso-Mix rotary jet mixing system in fermentation tanks, its beer-making capability has increased by 44 percent or 13 billion cans of beer. They have also recorded a 4% improvement in yeast viability.

As part of a major multimillion-pound plan to upgrade its plant at Northampton in the UK to meet higher production targets, brewer Carlsberg opted to look at innovative ways to improve its beer making process. Its choice of the novel Alfa Laval Isos-Mix mixing technology has had a significant impact on production.

“Iso-mix has enabled us to introduce a novel downstream process that, in some cases, has halved our fermenting time. This process is the first of its kind in the brewing world,” says Technical Operations Manager at the Carlsberg Northampton plant Thomas Paludan-Müller.

After rigorous testing Carlsberg took a bold decision: It would not only install the Iso-mix equipment in its larger-capacity fermentation tanks but also in 10 storage tanks – each with a 6,000-hectolitre capacity. The tanks were converted for fermentation by installing additional cooling using a heat exchanger in the tanks’ circulation loop to ensure that the correct process temperature of 14 degrees Celsius was maintained in the tank. To meet the temperature requirements needed for fermentation, an external chiller was attached within the pumping circulation system. This also supports the rotary jet mixing system.

Improved fermentation

“The fermentations now are more consistent, which means that we can predict with greater accuracy when beer is ready to move to filtration, which is important for planning,” says Paludan-Müller. “It also allows us to determine when we want to crop, i.e. harvest, the yeast, as we will turn off the Iso-mix and the yeast will settle. This gives us better viabilities, as the yeast does not sit in the cone of the fermentation vessel warming up and being compressed.

“Overall this means that the fermentation process is faster, the quality, stability and fermentation capabilities of the yeast during fermentation are maintained, and the final consistency and taste of the beer is not adversely affected by the introduction of the mixing technology,” says Paludan-Müller.

Simplicity and ease of installation

Another feature of the technology, he says, is its relative simplicity and ease of installation. This is coupled with the fact that it has enabled savings of several million pounds in capital expenditure. Paludan-Müller says that having the rotary jet mixer installations in former storage tanks has made a contribution to increasing output capacity without the need for significant capital investment in new fermentation tanks.

“Over the past 18 months to two years, we have increased our beer-making capability from 4.5 million to 6.5 million hectolitres,” explains Paludan-Müller. That 44 percent rise is equivalent to 13 billion cans of beer, and the changes to production have been achieved while continuing to make beer without interruption.

At the Carlsberg Northampton plant, 27 tanks of various types and sizes, from 2,400 to 6,000 hectolitres in capacity, have now been fitted, and there remains the potential to convert other tanks if required. The brewery has also removed 57 smaller-capacity fermentation tanks that are now surplus to requirements, due to the capacity increase provided by this new technology.

Diary

Alfa Laval Unique Sampling Valves ensure hygienic quality of rennet sampling
To improve the quality of its enzyme production and
eliminate contamination issues associated with plant
sampling valves, world-leading natural food ingredients
company Chr. Hansen replaced existing sampling valves
on two of its liquid rennet storage tanks with Alfa Laval
Unique Sampling Valves.

Designed for demanding hygienic applications, the Alfa Laval Unique Sampling Valves enabled the Chr. Hansen quality control team to collect consistent and representative samples from the weekly production batches, ensuring product compliance and total peace of mind.

High quality product extraction
Chr. Hansen produces high quality rennet, a natural complex of enzymes used for the production of cheese and dairy products. Rennet quality has a direct influence on the cost, quality and yield of the final product. To ensure the high quality of its rennet, Chr. Hansen collects weekly samples from its storage tanks. When contamination appeared in samples from two tanks, the plant maintenance manager undertook extensive investigations to determine the root cause of the problem. To identify the source of contamination, Torben Jørgensen, maintenance manager at the Chr. Hansen’s rennet production facility in Graasten, Denmark, systematically inspected all components in the production line and determined the existing sampling valves to be among the potential sources. According to Jørgensen, identifying the source of contamination can be expensive. Costs to conduct a thorough investigation, including examining the storage tank for any evidence of stress cracks and evaluating agitator function, can add up to EUR 10,000. The laboratory must also test additional samples, and the storage tank then must be sterilized and refilled. “Because the availability of quality rennet is critical to our customers, remedying the problem was a top priority,” says Jørgensen. “After discussing the situation with our Alfa Laval represen-tative, we decided to conduct a test using single-seat Alfa Laval Unique Sampling Valves mounted onto the sides of the two rennet storage tanks. This immediately solved the problem.”

Hygienic design, exceptional reproducibility
Alfa Laval Unique Sampling Valves contribute to providing optimal hy-giene conditions for tank sampling. These valves are certified according to European Hygienic Engineering & Design Group (EHEDG) guidelines and meet the requirements of the 3-A Sanitary Standards. Made of a single piece of stainless steel, the valve body has smooth, crevice-free surfaces and is manufactured without any welds. This eliminates the risk of pore formation, weld cracking and bacterial build-up, all of which can contribute to contamination problems.

“The Alfa Laval Unique Sampling Valves provide us with representative samples every time, which is essential to our business,” Jørgensen affirms. “This boosts the level of confidence we have in the samples taken and therefore enables us to reduce the sampling frequency without posing any risk of product non-compliance.”

Due to high reliability, sampling accuracy and excellent reproducibility, the Alfa Laval Unique Sampling Valves reduce production errors as well as product loss. In addition, the single-seat version is capable of being sterilized before and after sampling using dry steam at temperatures up to 121°C and pressures up to 2 bar.

“It is crucial that we can trust the sampling results. The Alfa Laval Unique Sampling Valves enable us to make the right decisions about each rennet batch based on the samples taken,” Jørgensen goes on to say. “With proper decision making, we are able to fulfil obligations to customers regarding delivery time and product quality.”

Easier to use, easier to maintain
The Alfa Laval Unique Sampling Valves also make it easier to take the rennet samples compared to other manufacturers’ sampling valves, according to Jørgensen. The ergonomically designed handle provides exceptional control during sampling.

Replacing the membrane seal is straightforward, which makes main-tenance, when required, easy. Moreover, because the Alfa Laval Unique Sampling Valves are integrated into the tanks, the risk of contamination resulting from corrosion is minimized. This extends the lifetime of the valves.

Ensuring sampling excellence throughout the plant
Based on the positive results from the trial, Chr. Hansen is considering replacing the other sampling valves in the rennet production facility with Alfa Laval Unique Sampling Valves.

“The Chr. Hansen brand is synonymous with high quality natural rennet,” says Jørgensen. “With the Alfa Laval Unique Sampling Valves in place, we now trust the sampling that we do. By gradually upgrading install-ations with these valves in the future, we will ensure highly accurate, reproducible and representative samples that will boost to the plant’s overall productivity.”

SRU pump – a proven curd transfer solution
Agropur Cooperative, Little Chute, Wisconsin – Backed by documented customer test results from Agropur in Wisconsin, the SRU provides a 20% reduction in curd fines along with high-er flow rates – resulting in quicker vat turnover and ultimately more cheese produced.

Founded in 1938, Agropur Cooperative is a leader in the North American dairy industry, with sales of 3.4 billion dollars. Their Little Chute, Wisconsin facility produces award winning cheese and whey products – drawing from a rich Wisconsin cheese making tradition. They consider the curd transfer pump a critical cheese making step – which must move the curd gently in order to minimize the cheese fines or waste created during vat transfer.

To summarize the Agropur cheese making process,they transfer cheese curd from processing vats to drain tables – where the curd is then made into mozzarella cheese.

Putting SRU to the test
The customer was interested in a new pump because their existing PR pump is no longer manufactured. Prior to select-ing a new curd transfer pump, Agropur established stringent testing criteria. Agropur measured cheese fines before the  inlet of the existing PR300 pump as well as three periodic  intervals at the tables. The fines levels measured at the three periodic test points were then averaged and compared to the fines content before the pump.

An Alfa Laval SRU6-WLD with Bi-Lobe, no galling rotors was
set up in the exact same testing criteria. The pump was installed with a higher speed motor to provide a faster flow, but it was also controlled via a variable frequency drive to provide the same flow rate as the PR300. After the SRU6 was installed, the pump ran for three weeks and the above testing was repeated.

The results
The SRU6 test results were overwhelmingly successful – proven by a significant, 20% reduction in curd fine levels. The SRU is also a CIP pump, which reduces overall cleaning time as well as potential pump damage which can occur during manual cleaning. The SRU6-WLD pump also runs at higher flow rates while reducing fines levels. These higher flow rates also result in quicker tank turnover – allowing for the production of more vats of cheese.

After testing two additional competitors’ pumps, an Alfa Laval SRU6-WLD pump was purchased because it provided the lowest fines compared to all pumps tested. Please arm yourself with this information for any of your upcoming curd transfer pumping application quotes or requests. This information can also be used to proactively target the large installed population of PR300 pumps in the market. Contact your Alfa Laval District Sales Manager or any member of the Pump Team for questions or a quote.

Using Toftejorg Rotary Spray Heads Increases Efficiency
One of the UK’s largest hard cheese processors has increased the efficiency of its raw milk tank cleaning operations by 35 % while reducing water usage by 30 % since replacing static spray balls in six raw milk storage silos with Toftejorg Sani-Mega rotary spray heads.

Llandyrnog Creamery processes 1 million litres of milk every day, 365 days a year to maintain its output of hard cheeses such as Cheddar, Double Gloucester and Red Leicester. 20,000 tonnes of cheese leave the site every year for supermarkets and small retailers around the UK. Raw milk is stored in six 160,000 litre capacity silos which are cleaned on a daily basis. The Creamery’s CIP (Cleaning In Place) routine involves a pre-rinse using water recovered from the final rinse, a hot wash with a 1% caustic solution, an intermediate rinse with fresh water and a sterilant phase followed by the final rinse using fresh water. This consumes 400,000 litres of water every day drawn from the Creamery’s own bore holes.

Water and energy intensive static spary balls
The CIP regime was originally devised for fixed spray balls which were installed at the same time as the raw milk silos in 1974. As Brian Emmerson, Llandyrnog’s Chief Engineer puts it: “They were nowhere near as efficient as we wanted
and quite wasteful of water and energy.” The fixed spray balls deluged the interior walls with large volumes of water. As well as being water and energy intensive, shadowing occurred in areas where the water failed to dislodge accumulated product. It also put a strain on the CIP system’s pump, making it necessary to stop and start between cleaning stages to scavenge the tanks.

Investing for the future
Llandyrnog has invested more than £3 million in the creamery since 2004. As part of the improvement programme, they
reviewed their total raw milk storage arrangements and decided that the CIP operation needed upgrading. They initially tested one Toftejorg Sani Mega rotary head and achieved such excellent results that they quickly installed the same equipment in the remaining five silos.

Great performance, controlled accuracy
Unlike the flooding action of spray balls, Alfa Laval’s Toftejorg Sani Megas clean through impingement and high levels of turbulence to a predetermined pattern. They scrub the silo’s internal walls with fan shaped jets that produce a vortex
action once they reach the bottom outlet. The cleaning medium itself is used to drive an internal turbine and gear system at low speeds (5 rpm) which enables the cleaning process to be controlled with great accuracy.

Dynamic machines give impressive results
According to Brian Emmerson, Llandyrnog Creamery was able to reach optimum cleaning efficiency very rapidly once
they had the Sani Megas properly set up. “Once the system was correctly configured we saw a difference. For a start, we noticed that the pre-rinse phase went from opaque to clear running much quicker than before, indicating that we were using much less water. Then, the same happened with the caustic phase and the intermediate rinse and so on. Basically it was a cumulative process with a good reduction in chemicals and water at each phase of the CIP cycle that resulted in less energy and water usage and greater cleaningefficiency.”

In fact the Sani Megas quickly saved sufficient energy, time and water to pay back the original investment. Cleaning times
have been slashed from an average of 43 minutes to 28 minutes per silo. As importantly, standards of cleanliness have seen similar improvements.Total Viable Count (TVC) and other standard test procedure snow demonstrate much higher levels of hygiene while shadow areas have been totally eliminated. 

 


 

Food Additives

China´s Brown Gold
Used in Chinese cuisine for more than 2,000 years, soy sauce is today still made according to a time-honoured process. But in the space of just four years, many leading soy sauce producers in China have started to scrap traditional methods and switch to modern Equipment from Alfa Laval. The result has been more efficient production, and improved product quality.

The mild scent of soy sauce hangs in the air outside Guangdong Meiweixian Flavouring Foods factory in the southern Chinese city of Zhongshan, reminding the visitor that this is the soy sauce capital of the world.

Meiweixian, with its Chubang brand, is one of the leading producers of this liquid seasoning, which is made from a fermented paste of boiled soybeans, wheat, brine and a mould.  Soy sauce was originally invented in China sometime around the 5th century BC, and with its deep brown colour, pleasant aroma and richly satisfying flavour, it is used in place of salt in East and Southeast Asian cuisines, both for cooking and as a condiment. It is also increasingly seen on dining tables in the Western world.

“Meiweixian is number two in the market in China, but the top 10 producers only hold about 20 percent of the market – so there is a great growth potential in this category,” says general manager Yang Mingquan, who is also in charge of production technology at Meiweixian. The company has grand expansion plans to almost double the production in Zhongshan to 500,000 tonnes within three years while building a new factory in Yangxi, also in Guangdong, which will have a capacity of 1 million tonnes.

This Pearl River Delta region in southern China has played a major role in the country’s rapid  industrialization over the past two decades, but it is also a centre for the very traditional soy sauce industry. Most of the country’s leading soy sauce producers have clustered in Guangdong because the province’s weather conditions are best for fermentation, which is a critical step in the manufacturing process.

China is the world’s leading soy sauce producing country with an annual production of approximately 5 million tonnes – more than half of the world’s total production of 8 million tonnes. The domestic soy sauce market is highly fragmented, with several hundred – perhaps as many as a thousand – producers. The government is pushing the soy sauce industry towards consolidation, so it is expected that many of the small and medium-sized producers will either go out of business or be acquired.

While many other industries in China have modernized through the introduction of advanced equipment, soy sauce production in China remains very traditional and labour-intensive. For example, after fermentation – which can take up to six months – the sauce needs to be filtered, but the filtration process is still carried out by hand, which can pose food hygiene problems.

Four years ago Alfa Laval realized that its high-speed separators, sterilizers and evaporators – which are used extensively for wine, tea, coffee, juice and dairy produc-tion around the world – could modernize this ancient industry. As with these other foodstuffs, there was potential for soy sauce to be made in a more cost-efficient way, and for product quality to be improved.

A team led by Daniel Lin at Alfa Laval in Shanghai contacted leading soy sauce producers to spread the word about the benefits of introducing high-speed separators to soy sauce production. There was initially some resistance, as the soy sauce industry is highly traditional. Also, the technology had not been tested commercially for soy sauce applications, and Alfa Laval – despite being a world leader in the food and beverage industry – was largely unknown in the Chinese soy sauce business. So field tests were carried out with a small separator at a number of potential customers’ sites. Due to differences in raw materials and fermentation processes, soy sauce varies from customer to customer, so Alfa Laval carried out extensive testing to come up with tailor-made solutions for each customer.

Tests showed that Alfa Laval separators offer significant savings in manpower; with traditional soy sauce produc-tion between three and five people are needed per machine in the process. With Alfa Laval separators, one worker can supervise up to four machines. The Alfa Laval equipment also takes less space in the factory, reduces the processing time, and is easier to clean than existing equipment.

And then there are considerable product quality benefits from the Alfa Laval technology: contamination risks are reduced as Alfa Laval separators meet stringent food hygiene standards, unlike the existing equipment used by soy sauce manufacturers, which is often not designed specifically for food use.

For dar soy sauce, which is thicker, richer and has caramel added, manufacturers need to reduce the water content, and the traditional way to do this is to use a boiling tank. Alfa Laval’s solution for this is an evaporator called the AlfaVap. This streamlines the process and makes it considerably more energy-efficient: 60 percent of the energy can be saved compared with traditional production.

One early challenge Alfa Laval had to overcome in adapting its technology for soy sauce production was finding the right material for its equipment. Normally, stainless steel is used to manufacture the high-speed separators for wine, tea and juice, but it would not work for soy sauce since the separators and sterilizers would corrode in just a few months.

“Soy sauce is a very special product,” says Lin. “The low pH value – about 4.5 to 5.5 – combined with high temperatures and a high salt content – 18 to 22 percent – make the working conditions for the machines very tough.” So material specialists at Alfa Laval’s Materials & Chemistry Centre in Sweden tested different varieties of soy sauce supplied by Chinese manufacturers with many different materials, and came up with innovative solu-tions. So now the AlfaVap evaporators for soy sauce feature titanium plates, while the separators are made with specially developed anti-corrosion materials.

Meiweixian became an Alfa Laval customer in August 2012, when it took delivery of the first high-speed separator at its factory in Zhongshan, and followed this up a year later with an order for AlfaVap. “Our products are regarded as high-quality, and that is why we need to have a high standard of equipment in our factory,” says Yang. “We are still testing, but we believe that the separator can substantially improve our products, especially within the filtration area. Traditional filtration with sediment tanks leaves a lot of sludge.”

Word has spread quickly about the benefits brought by Alfa Laval equipment among China’s main soy sauce producers. By June 2013, seven of the top 10 soy sauce producers in China were using Alfa Laval technology. Besides Meiweixian, customers today include Foshan Haitian, Lee Kum Kee, Yantai Shinho, Nestlé Maggi, Heinz Foodstar, Hengshun, and Pearl River Bridge. “In just four years, our soy sauce equipment business has grown substantially,” says Lin.

The experience of the Chinese soy sauce industry and its switch to Alfa Laval solutions shows that even with processes that have been tweaked and refined for many centuries, there is always room for improvement.

___________________________________________________

Guangdong Meiweixian flavouring foods

Established: The original Company started production more than a Century ago. Factory production started in 1956. Owned by the state-owned enterprise Jonjee Hi-Tech Group.
Location: Zhongshan, Guangdong province, China.
Annual turnover: About 2 billion yuan (EUR 24 million).
Leading brand: Chubang.
Current production volume: 300,000 tonnes in 2012 at the Zhongshan plant. Soy sauce represents 75 percent of production. Planned expansion to 500,00 tonnes in 2015. The Company has also invested in another site at Yangxi, with a planned production volume of 1 million tonnes, of which some 200,000 tonnes will consist of canned snack food.
Number of employees: 2,000.
Products: Soy sauce, oyster sauce, chicken powder, preserved bean curd, vinegar and various types of seasoning sauces and powder, in total nine categories.

 


 

Prepare Food

A wild ride on the winds of change
Russian juice and baby food producer Lebedyansky JSC has gone from being a small cannery controlled by the Soviet government to a flourishing enterprise in a competitive market. It’s been quite a journey.

The fragrance of apricots permeates the workshop in Lebedyansky’s production plant in Lebedyan, about 400 kilometres south of Moscow, as big boxes of the justdelivered fruit wait to be transformed into Lebedyansky’s well-known Frutonyanya baby juices and purees.

Market leader

Lebedyansky is the baby-food market leader in Russia. Recent surveys show that the Frutonyanya brand is known to 94 percent of the Russian population. The company’s baby purees and juices are also exported to Azerbaijan, Armenia, Belarus, Kazakhstan, Ukraine and other countries in the region. However, the company’s main profit stems from juice production. Lebedyansky is the largest natural juice producer in Eastern Europe (the Commonwealth of Independent States and former socialist countries) and the sixth largest in the world.

In 2007, the company produced and sold more than a billion litres of baby puree and juices. It has a Russian market share of almost 44 percent for baby juices, 32 percent for baby purees and more than 33 percent for juice. The company’s annual turnover reached about 945 million US dollars in 2007.

The history

Looking at this terrific business success, one can hardly believe that in 1992 Lebedyansky had only one small juice preparation line and was on the edge of bankruptcy. “The success of our business is the result of hard work and the intellectual efforts of many people, especially our management,” says Alexander Kobzev, general director of Lebedyansky. “And we were lucky to live in a time of change.”

Such change was unimaginable when the company began in 1967, as a small cannery in the little Russian town of Lebedyan in Lipetsk region. The location was chosen by the Soviet authorities because the area was widely known for its fruit and vegetable cultivation, as well as for its high-quality spring water. Its mild climate was especially good for the apple and cherry orchards that traditionally were planted there.

“I was born in Lebedyan,” says Kobzev, “and I remember that in the 1970s local citizens never bought the products of Lebedyansky cannery. Everybody preferred to can their own fruits and vegetables at home.”

The way to profitability

Like other state-owned companies in the Soviet Union’s planned economy, the Lebedyansky cannery was not designed to make a profit, but during the first 14 years, six of the company’s top managers were replaced, and the plant suffered from enormous debt. Things changed in 1981 when Nickolay Bortsov, today one of the owners of JSC Lebedyansky, was appointed general manager. He equipped the plant with new technology and set up a new line of Tetra Pak aseptic filling, including pumps, heat transfer equipment and valves from Alfa Laval. This made Lebedyansky one of two Soviet plants to use frontline technology.

1992 was a crucial year for Lebedyansky. The former socialist enterprise was transformed into a joint stock company. Bortsov and his son, Yuri, got the main share of stock. After the transformation Lebedyansky focused on producing juice in aseptic packages and baby food.

“It was just after the collapse of the USSR,” Kobzev recalls. “The economy and financial systems were ruined. I had just begun working at the plant and saw how difficult it was to survive.” The law obliged Lebedyansky to produce juice and baby food for residents in the northern part of the country, but to afford the raw materials the company was forced to take large bank loans.

When payment for the orders failed to appear, Lebedyansky could not pay back its debt and hence teetered on the brink of bankruptcy.

“The company could not generate any income,” says Kobzev. “Everything was eaten up by taxes. We needed a trade company that would sell our products in exchange for raw materials.”So Lebedyansky set up the trade company and slowly paid off the debt. Meanwhile the management was learning about surviving in a market economy. Every day brought new knowledge about the business.

Juices and purees

In 1996 the company launched Tonus, its first line of branded juices. The natural, healthy juices quickly won consumers all over Russia. Then, when the financial crisis hit Russia in 1998, Lebedyansky saw an opportunity to expand its business further. Foreign producers were leaving the Russian market and prices were dropping. Lebedyansky had only 4 percent of the Russian market share, but company managers decided to increase production. The rest, as they say, is history.

In the years that followed, Lebedyansky moved its headquarters to Moscow and recruited several medium- and top-level managers with experience from major Western companies. Step by step, Lebedyansky went from a production- oriented to a market-oriented company. By purchasing plants and improving its technology it became the leader of the Russian juice market.

Lebedyansky launched a balanced portfolio of strong juice brands, including the Ya brand in the premium segment, the Tonus brand in the mid-priced segment and the Fruktoviy Sad, Frustyle and Privet brands in the low-priced segment. In addition, the company began selling baby juices and purees under the Frutonyanya brand. Today Lebedyansky has three production facilities: the Lebedyansky production and storage complex in Lebedyan, a juice, concentrates and mineral water bottling plant in Lipetsk and the TROYA-Ultra juices plant in St Petersburg.

Lucrative market

A statue of Lenin placed in front of the Lebedyan plant’s new office building is the only reminder of the old days. Lebedyansky continues to develop, improving its existing products and regularly bringing new products to the market. In March 2008 the company announced that it intends to sell just over 75 percent of its juice business to PepsiCo and concentrate on producing baby food and mineral water.

“Baby food is a very lucrative and growing market, and we believe it has a good future,” says Kobzev. “Gross profit from baby food increased by 50 percent in 2007, compared with 2006. We see a lot of opportunities in this segment, as Russian parents today prefer readymade baby food to making it themselves at home, as in the old days.” This is connected to the rising standard of living in Russia, which in general has increased the population’s ability to buy readymade food.

Effecient processes

To realize the business opportunities Lebedyansky decided to upgrade its fruit preparation equipment. The company chose Alfa Laval’s fruit preparation line, which was installed in the Lebedyan plant in 2007. “We were already familiar with the Alfa Laval brand,” says Alexander Dubrovin, chief engineer at the Lebedyansky plant. “Alfa Laval’s equipment is being used in the aseptic lines at all our plants, so we know it very well.” Kobzev explains: “We picked Alfa Laval because we are interested in high-quality equipment. Quality is very important to us, not only because of profits and market competition, but also because our mission is to produce healthy products for everybody, and especially for babies.”

One prerequisite for the new line was that it should allow for cold extraction of juice and puree, which means no heat is added in the first stage of processing the fruit. “With cold extraction we are able to preserve more vitamins, which is particularly important when making baby juices and purees,” says Kobzev.

Capacity

At the Lebedyan plant the Alfa Laval fruit preparation line is in operation 20 hours per day, processing apples, pears and apricots as well as cherries, berries and other fruit. In the aseptic blue light of the factory, the fruit moves along a conveyor belt leading to a drum washing machine and then an air washing machine. It then reaches the sorting table where women in blue overalls and white
hairnets remove sprigs and leaves and an occasional bad piece before it’s processed into puree or juice.

“In this factory we process about 200 tonnes of fresh fruit every day,” says Alexander Dubrovin, chief engineer at the Lebedyansky plant. “Mostly we use the Alfa Laval fruit preparation line, but in peak season we also need to use the old line, although it’s much slower.”

Lebedyansky can also make baby food in its other two factories, although none of them is as efficient as the large Lebedyan plant. Now a unique storage for juices is being built there. Today it is a construction of metal bars more than 40 metres high. When completed, the entire storage will be controlled by computers, and production will be delivered back and forth automatically.

Nevertheless, according to the agreement with PepsiCo, the Lebedyan plant as well as the plant in St Petersburg will be sold to PepsiCo. LSC Lebedyansky will keep only the enterprise in Lipetsk, where baby food, not-from-concentrate baby juices and mineral water will be produced.

“We haven’t made any decision about the Alfa Laval juice preparation line yet,” says Kobzev. “Either we’ll leave it here or it will be transferred to Lipetsk. But definitely we will keep producing baby purees using Alfa Laval equipment.”


Keeping the processing pace

JSC Lebedyansky has been using an Alfa Laval fruit processing
line since 2007, when it was installed at the plant in Lebedyan to
produce baby food. The equipment includes core components such as Alfa Laval Clara high-speed separators, Alfa Laval Foodec
decanter centrifuges, Alfa Laval ViscoLine tubular heat exchangers,
Alfa Laval Frontline plate heat exchangers, Alfa Laval Alrox
deaeration modules and a wide range of fluid-handling equipment.

“We compared equipment of different firms,” says Alexander
Dubrovin, chief engineer of Lebedyansky plant. “Alfa Laval offered the best value for money and more opportunities for flexible
work. We used to have some problems with our apples, for
example. They come in very different sizes and sometimes need to be carefully cleaned of soil and solid mud as well as separated from
stones. Together with Alfa Laval specialists we solved this problem.”

Extra washing

Albert Akhmetzianov, Alfa Laval business development manager,
explains that special traps for the waste and an additional drum
washer were added. “Basically,” he says, “we adjusted the Alfa Laval fruit preparation line to fit local circumstances.”

“The Alfa Laval line allowed us to increase the production of our baby juices and purees,” says Dubrovin. “The old fruit preparation line could process at most four tonnes of fruit per hour. The Alfa Laval line processes much more – up to 10 tonnes of fresh fruit per hour, including apples, pears, apricots, cherries and berries.” In addition, the Alfa Laval line allows for cold extraction of juice and puree

Alfa Laval Unique Single Seat Valves ensure reliable aseptic processing of tomato-based products
When expanding its processing facilities in Piacenza, Italy, Steriltom SRL, the country’s largest producers of chopped and pulp tomato for pizza and pasta sauces, contracted tomato processing plant designers Inox Food Technology (IFT). The challenge? To incorporate a new cost-effective processing line into Steriltom’s aseptic production and thereby ensure the reliable, cost-effective processing and quality of premier tomato-based products. To do so, IFT chose Alfa Laval Unique Single Seat Valves (SSVs), which handle product acidity, viscosity and large particles and seeds with ease.

Valve reliability ensures more uptime
Peak tomato processing season is short and intense, so downtime is unthinkable during the tomato-processing season. Steriltom processes about 150,000 tons of tomatoes each year in 60 to 100 days so the plant must work at maximum capacity, continuously processing fresh, ripe tomatoes 24/7 in order to prevent spoilage and inferior product quality.

The hygiene level and reliability of the processing lines are therefore essential to plant productivity and profitability. Based on past experience, IFT recommended Alfa Laval Unique SSVs as a worthwhile investment because the valves are reliable and easy to work with, and require minimal maintenance. The smooth surfaces and hygienic design of the Alfa Laval Unique SSVs enable extended production runs without intermediate cleaning.

“We recommend Alfa Laval to our customers for two reasons: the excellent quality-price ratio and the backing of a global company with a local service network for genuine spare parts and top-notch service,” shares Mr. Soldati. “We installed Alfa Laval Unique SSV valves in other processing lines at the Steriltom plant so we know that the aseptic version of the Alfa Laval Unique SSV range is very reliable and cost-effective for hygiene-critical applications.”

Straightforward, high-quality hygienic valves
A total of 15 Alfa Laval Unique SSV Long Stroke units are installed on the new Steriltom processing line. Unlike conventional butterfly valves and ball valves, the Unique SSV design gently handles fluid products containing solids and delicate particles such as diced tomato yet enables complete cleaning of the valve seat during the Cleaning-in-Place (CIP) cycle and extended running times between CIPs.

Engineered to the highest hygienic standards and demands in the processing industry, the Alfa Laval Unique SSV is a robust pneumatic seat valve with a smooth, weld-free valve body pressed from a single stainless steel disc. In the aseptic configuration, it features a one-piece diaphragm that hermetically seals the valve against possible contaminants from the atmosphere, thereby ensuring true aseptic process conditions with full protection against the effects of microorganisms during processing. The range also provides full traceability in compliance with the EU Food Regulation 1935/2004.

Aseptic tomato processing plant design
To maximize aseptic processing and productivity, IFT designed Steriltom’s new facilities with quality and cost-effectiveness in mind, selecting equipment that meets strict food safety standards. Equipment selection included Alfa Laval Unique SSVs, which are EHEDG-certified and authorized to carry the 3-A symbol.

“Steriltom uses aseptic technology to preserve the quality as well as the natural taste and appearance of its partially processed tomatoes,” says Leonardo Soldati, principal and one of the chief designers at IFT. “We chose valves for the new processing line in keeping with Steriltom’s policies.” Soldati explains that the Alfa Laval Unique SSV Long Stroke is ideal where larger product openings are required to provide a more gentle and smooth flow control of viscous products with a high solids content, such as tomato-based products with chopped tomato and seeds.

Optimized performance backed by solid service
IFT and Steriltom are aware of the advantages offered by Alfa Laval Unique SSV, namely:

• The interval of time between scheduled service visits is long
and does not affect the peak production season.

• Service parts do not require frequent replacement and
genuine spare parts, when required, are readily available.

• Local Alfa Laval service engineers are on call 24/7, even
during peak production season in the summer months.

“We have been working with Alfa Laval from the start because Alfa Laval components, such as the Unique SSV valves, meet our and our customers’ strict requirements for reliability, hygiene, safety as well as for fast and affordable replacement parts,” Mr. Soldati says.

Continued focus on quality and cost-effectiveness
When asked about what lies ahead for IFT, Mr. Soldati is optimistic about the future and remains committed to quality and cost-effectiveness.

“IFT looks forward to working together with Italy’s tomato producers to shape the future for processed tomato products,” he says. “We aim to incorporate advances in processing technology into the production lines of Italy’s tomato-based product manufacturers. Continuing to work closely with Alfa Laval’s distributor here will help ensure that IFT remains on the cutting edge.”

 


 

Soy Product

Soy sauce - China's brown gold
Used in Chinese cuisine for more than 2,000 years, soy sauce is today still made according to a time-honoured process. But in the space of just four years, many leading soy sauce producers in China have started to scrap traditional methods and switch to modern equipment from Alfa Laval. The result has been more efficient production, and improved product quality.

The mild scent of soy sauce hangs in the air outside Guangdong Meiweixian Flavouring Foods factory in the southern Chinese city of Zhongshan, reminding the visitor that this is the soy sauce capital of the world.

Meiweixian, with its Chubang brand, is one of the leading producers of this liquid seasoning, which is made from a fermented paste of boiled soybeans, wheat, brine and a mould. Soy sauce was originally invented in China sometime around the 5th century BC, and with its deep brown colour, pleasant aroma and richly satisfying flavour, it is used in place of salt in East and Southeast Asian cuisines, both for cooking and as a condiment. It is also increasingly seen on dining tables in the Western world.

“Meiweixian is number two in the market in China, but the top 10 producers only hold about 20 percent of the market – so there is a great growth potential in this category,” says general manager Yang Mingquan, who is also in charge of production technology at Meiweixian. The company has grand expansion plans to almost double the production in Zhongshan to 500,000 tonnes within three years while building a new factory in Yangxi, also in Guangdong, which will have a capacity of 1 million tonnes.

This Pearl River Delta region in southern China has played a major role in the country’s rapid industrialization over the past two decades, but it is also a centre for the very traditional soy sauce industry. Most of the country’s leading soy sauce producers have clustered in Guangdong because the province’s weather conditions are best for fermentation, which is a critical step in the manufacturing process.

China is the world’s leading soy sauce producing country with an annual production of approximately 5 million tonnes – more than half of the world’s total production of 8 million tonnes. The domestic soy sauce market is highly fragmented, with several hundred – perhaps as many as a thousand – producers. The government is pushing the soy sauce industry towards consolidation, so it is expected that many of the small and medium-sized producers will either go out of business or be acquired.

While many other industries in China have modernized through the introduction of advanced equipment, soy sauce production in China remains very traditional and labour-intensive. For example, after fermentation – which can take up to six months – the sauce needs to be filtered, but the filtration process is still carried out by hand, which can pose food hygiene problems.

Four years ago Alfa Laval realized that its high-speed separators, sterilizers and evaporators – which are used extensively for wine, tea, coffee, juice and dairy production around the world – could modernize this ancient industry. As with these other foodstuffs, there was potential for soy sauce to be made in a more cost-efficient way, and for product quality to be improved.

A team led by Daniel Lin at Alfa Laval in Shanghai contacted leading soy sauce producers to spread the word about the benefits of introducing high-speed separators to soy sauce production. There was initially some resistance, as the soy sauce industry is highly traditional. Also, the technology had not been tested commercially for soy sauce applications, and Alfa Laval – despite being a world leader in the food and beverage industry – was largely unknown in the Chinese soy sauce business. So field tests were carried out with a small separator at a number of potential customers’ sites. Due to differences in raw materials and fermentation processes, soy sauce varies from customer to customer, so Alfa Laval carried out extensive testing to come up with tailor-made solutions for each customer.

Tests showed that Alfa Laval separators offer significant savings in manpower; with traditional soy sauce production between three and five people are needed per machine in the process. With Alfa Laval separators, one worker can supervise up to four machines. The Alfa Laval equipment also takes less space in the factory, reduces the processing time, and is easier to clean than existing equipment.

And then there are considerable product quality benefits from the Alfa Laval technology: contamination risks are reduced as Alfa Laval separators meet stringent food hygiene standards, unlike the existing equipment used by soy sauce manufacturers, which is often not designed specifically for food use.

For dark soy sauce, which is thicker, richer and has caramel added, manufacturers need to reduce the water content, and the traditional way to do this is to use a boiling tank. Alfa Laval’s solution for this is an evaporator called the AlfaVap. This streamlines the process and makes it considerably more energy-efficient: 60 percent of the energy can be saved compared with traditional production.

One early challenge Alfa Laval had to overcome in adapting its technology for soy sauce production was finding the right material for its equipment. Normally, stainless steel is used to manufacture the high-speed

separators for wine, tea and juice, but it would not work for soy sauce since the separators and sterilizers would corrode in just a few months.

“Soy sauce is a very special product,” says Lin. “The low pH value – about 4.5 to 5.5 – combined with high temperatures and a high salt content – 18 to 22 percent – make the working conditions for the machines very tough.” So material specialists at Alfa Laval’s Materials & Chemistry Centre in Sweden tested different varieties of soy sauce supplied by Chinese manufacturers with many different materials, and came up with innovative solutions. So now the AlfaVap evaporators for soy sauce feature titanium plates, while the separators are made with specially developed anti-corrosion materials.

Meiweixian became an Alfa Laval customer in August 2012, when it took delivery of the first high-speed separator at its factory in Zhongshan, and followed this up a year later with an order for AlfaVap. “Our products are regarded as high-quality, and that is why we need to have a high standard of equipment in our factory,” says Yang. “We are still testing, but we believe that the separator can substantially improve our products, especially within the filtration area. Traditional filtration with sediment tanks leaves a lot of sludge.”

Word has spread quickly about the benefits brought by Alfa Laval equipment among China’s main soy sauce producers. By June 2013, seven of the top 10 soy sauce producers in China were using Alfa Laval technology. Besides Meiweixian, customers today include Foshan Haitian, Lee Kum Kee, Yantai Shinho, Nestlé Maggi, Heinz Foodstar, Hengshun, and Pearl River Bridge. “In just four years, our soy sauce equipment business has grown substantially,” says Lin.

The experience of the Chinese soy sauce industry and its switch to Alfa Laval solutions shows that even with processes that have been tweaked and refined for many centuries, there is always room for improvement.