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Case History
Bird's Eye Versatile Vegetable Lines
Situation:
Bird's Eye looks to Heat and Control to provide greater versatility, value-added product quality and lower oil usage.
Solution:
Installation of Heat and Control's batter/bread/fry equipment line including indirect-heated Breaded Products Fryers, Ishida weighers and FastBack distribution system.
Results:
Uniform coverage and cooking by Heat and Control batter/bread/fry lines deliver
value-added quality to fried vegetables prepared by Birds Eye Foods, the nation’s largest processor of frozen vegetables.
The Birds Eye Repack Facility
in Montezuma, GA features
two Heat and Control
prepared foods lines. One
line mainly handles breaded okra and squash, while the other runs onion rings and hush puppies. But Birds Eye Foods can take full advantage of the versatility of Heat and Control equipment by using the second line to also process their fried cheese sticks and French toast!
“The Heat and Control lines
are extremely versatile,” reports Travis Simmons, Birds Eye Foods Technical Services Manager, “and easy to configure for just the right amount of pickup and coverage on all
of our products.”
Each breader’s triple-flip conveyor system ensures application of pre-dust and breading into all the product nooks and crannies, while a unique lifter-conveyor easily adjusts the bottom bed density
of breading from firm to fluffy
to meet each product’s specific requirements.
Heat and Control batter applicators uniformly coat all product surfaces and cavities, and feature continuous filtration
to protect product quality and a unique belt wiper and air knife to keep excess batter in the system.
Precise control of oil temperature in the indirect-heated Breaded Products Fryer delivers consistent product quality. The fryer requires 25-40% less oil than comparable direct-heated systems for faster oil turnover, while full-flow oil circulation enhances fines removal to minimize oil degradation.
At the end of the processing lines, Ishida weighers insure dependable and accurate packaging of all products. A new FastBack distribution system is being installed to improve product delivery to the weighers, and protect the quality product that goes into each package.
“The FastBack design is simple and reliable,” says Simmons, “and based on our experience with three FastBacks over the past two years, this new system will be a vast improvement over
electro-magnetic vibratory conveyors. The Heat and Control engineering team has provided quick and accurate answers to any questions we’ve had about the installation,” he continues, “and they have solved design problems that other vendors have been unable to provide."
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