Italian food company Barilla is headquartered in Parma and a well-known market leader worldwide in the production and processing of pasta products.
How to improve dough handling and drying efficiency
Barilla
Parma (Italy)
The customer
Numerous other food products, primarily grained-based items (such as bread, cookies, salty nibbles and snacks), are made in the around 50 production facilities worldwide. Bread-like rusks are also part of the portfolio.
Application
To make rusks, dough first needs to be made and then baked. The dough is then sliced and roasted at a low heat in the oven until the slices look darker and dry out to produce the rusks. In order to extend their shelf life, the rusks need to dry in the oven or a drying chamber to cut their water content to below 10% so that they stay crispy.
During the production process, the quality of the dough is very important. A change in the ingredients meant that the dough was stickier, making it harder to remove from the belt. It was also more compact and moister so that it had to be dried more thoroughly and for longer.
Our belt solution
Our Transilon belt with a quartz sand pattern (E 4/2 U0/U2 QS-HACCP-FF blue, art.-no. 906765) is now used during the production process to ensure the products are transferred without sticking to the belt. The quartz sand pattern is ideal because it gives the belt a slightly roughened and granular surface in order to guarantee that the sticky dough is released. Thanks to the exceptionally good release properties and the fact that no dough is left behind on the belt, our product is a more economical choice. What’s more, the slightly raised QS pattern on the processing belt makes it very easy to clean.
Our Prolink series 5 belt is used as a curved belt in the subsequent drying process. Due to its large open area, the Prolink belt offers good airflow and is therefore perfect during the drying process.
The result
The customer is delighted with our product recommendations and the installation of our Transilon and Prolink belts.
We fitted 90 meters of 6 patterned Transilon belts to the horizontal conveyors and several meters of Prolink to the drying line.
