Gea shows good food production process

High­lights at this year’s fair include the new Gea Mul­ti Jec­tor 2mm, a new mul­ti-pur­pose brine injec­tor with flex­i­ble nee­dles and the Maxi For­mer for the effec­tive pro­duc­tion of drum formed meat. The new and award-win­ning solu­tion for in-line smok­ing of meat, poul­try, seafood and meal com­po­nents on Cook Star spi­ral oven will be demon­strat­ed to the Asian mar­ket for the first time. In the area food pack­ag­ing, the ver­ti­cal pack­ag­ing machine Smart Pack­er SX400 will be shown and offers con­ve­nient and inex­pen­sive means of pack­ag­ing a wide vari­ety of con­ve­nience goods.

Hav­ing acquired the Ital­ian Pavan Group, tech­nol­o­gy group Gea and Pavan will join forces at this year’s Gul­food Man­u­fac­tur­ing trade fair for the first time. Pavan, a lead­ing man­u­fac­tur­er of extru­sion and milling tech­nol­o­gy for pro­cess­ing diverse fresh and dry pas­tas, cere­al-based snacks and break­fast cere­als, will present its tech­nol­o­gy know-how to booth visitors.

Like­wise, atten­dees will get to see the Lab Homog­e­niz­er Twin Pan­da 600. The homog­e­niz­er is a small table-top unit designed for con­tin­u­ous oper­a­tion at high pres­sure and is the per­fect machine for lab­o­ra­to­ry-scale, high pres­sure pro­cess­ing of dairy prod­ucts, fruit juices, liq­uid food, food addi­tives and ingre­di­ents. The RayPP (Pilot Plant) batch freeze dry­er is equal­ly well-suit­ed to small-scale and R&D dry­ing of gen­er­al food prod­ucts such as instant cof­fee, fruit, veg­eta­bles, herbs, meat, seafood and pet food, as well as very sen­si­tive prod­ucts such as lac­tic acid bac­te­ria and enzymes. The new dry­er more close­ly mim­ics the char­ac­ter­is­tics of larg­er indus­tri­al plants allow­ing more accu­rate scal­a­bil­i­ty to full production.

In-depth knowledge-sharing and experiential sessions

The com­pa­ny will present a new way of shar­ing its exper­tise and expe­ri­ence with vis­i­tors at the company’s booth. Cus­tomers and inter­est­ed par­ties are invit­ed to book a VIP time slot – choos­ing from among 15 dif­fer­ent tech­nol­o­gy top­ics which will be pre­sent­ed by Gea experts – which allows them to set the agen­da for their per­son­al­ized in-depth knowl­edge ses­sion. Top­ics will cov­er Gea’s diverse exper­tise in food pro­cess­ing and pack­ag­ing, bev­er­age, but­ter mak­ing, bak­ery and pas­ta extru­sion and milling.

Uniform meat injection thanks to unique 2mm OptiFlex needles

The new brine injec­tion sys­tem in the Mul­ti Jec­tor 2mm is specif­i­cal­ly ded­i­cat­ed to pre­cise turkey bacon and poul­try pro­cess­ing, for 700 mm wide lines. The sys­tem fea­tures two mil­lime­ter Opti Flex nee­dles – to date only avail­able from Gea – which deliv­er a tight injec­tion pat­tern, allow­ing for excep­tion­al injec­tion accu­ra­cy, prod­uct qual­i­ty and con­sis­ten­cy. The new equip­ment is seam­less­ly inte­grat­ed with­in the Super Chill brine chiller and the Mul­ti Shak­er, which removes excess brine, clos­es nee­dle marks and acti­vates pro­teins, ulti­mate­ly result­ing in low stan­dard devi­a­tion dur­ing pro­duc­tion and thus increas­ing qual­i­ty, yield and profit.

Rotary drum former with innovative step-filling technique

The Maxi For­mer pro­vides very high pro­duc­tion capac­i­ty, bet­ter con­sis­ten­cy and sig­nif­i­cant­ly low­er oper­at­ing costs in the pro­duc­tion of drum formed meat such as chick­en nuggets and burg­er pat­ties. The step-fill­ing sys­tem min­i­mizes the pres­sure used to fill each cav­i­ty care­ful­ly and pro­gres­sive­ly. This, com­bined with its rigid drum design, reduces wastage, improves fill­ing accu­ra­cy, cre­ates a high­er qual­i­ty formed prod­uct with excel­lent shape reten­tion and min­i­mizes down time for clean­ing. Its knock-out sys­tem uses dry air at high pres­sure applied only to the rel­e­vant cav­i­ties, instead of the entire drum.

Effective vertical packaging solution

Gea’s Smart­Pack­er SX400 pack­ag­ing machine, which will be shown at Gul­food Man­u­fac­tur­ing for pack­ing of dates, can be used for many appli­ca­tions from grat­ed cheese to frozen veg­eta­bles, chick­en nuggets or dried fruits and is char­ac­ter­ized by reli­a­bil­i­ty, cost effi­cien­cy and sim­ple oper­a­tion. This ver­ti­cal pack­ag­ing machine is equipped with PTC (Per­ma­nent Tem­per­a­ture Con­trol) for poly­eth­yl­ene-based mate­ri­als and heat-seal for lam­i­nat­ed films, while offer­ing vari­a­tion in for­mats, rang­ing from stan­dard flat pil­low bags to Easy­Doy bags – capa­ble of han­dling up to 10 kg/bag and 100 bags per minute.

All suppliers on one platform

From green­field projects to cor­rec­tive and pre­dic­tive main­te­nance and machine and plant per­for­mance opti­miza­tion, Gea dig­i­tal ser­vices give cus­tomers new ways to stay a step ahead of the com­pe­ti­tion. The lat­est is a cloud-based plat­form which falls under the umbrel­la of Gea Advance and which includes all of Gea’s new dig­i­tal solu­tions for cus­tomers. Cre­at­ed as part of a col­lab­o­ra­tion with start-up MachIQ, the por­tal offers cus­tomers cut­ting-edge ser­vices such as remote main­te­nance, data analy­sis and com­pre­hen­sive e‑commerce solu­tions. The port­fo­lio will be round­ed out with addi­tion­al offer­ings such as con­di­tion mon­i­tor­ing, PLC con­nec­tions and video sup­port by the end of 2020. This solu­tion stands out from oth­er com­pa­ra­ble indus­try por­tals giv­en the new dig­i­tal coop­er­a­tion chan­nel is sup­pli­er-inde­pen­dent, which means cus­tomers are able to inte­grate all of their sup­pli­er inter­ac­tions into this sin­gle platform.