Putting up a New Biscuit Line ! Keep these points in mind

Entrepreneurs or businessmen who are in process of buying , installation of new biscuit line should keep following points in mind ,apart from legal requirement of industrial licenses , pollution clearance's and of course finances

Orders
Should have confirmed orders either for his own brand or as a Co -packer or Contract manufacturer.

Space
As space requirement for biscuit is large as normal biscuit oven would be 250ft - 300 ft long and width would be 10 ft in width hence for such a line with provision for second line one has take an area of 700 ft x100 ft area . Single plant could be started with a provision to install second plant .Try to avoid bends and curves on the line . H shaped halls or I shape halls are highly recommended for biscuit plant with mixing on first floor . Had provision for lifts and escalators .

Versatility of the line
You should ask your biscuit plant manufacturer to give you a complete versatile plant where you can produce hard dough and short dough variety with all the accessories like salt spray , milk sprays , oil sprays .

Roof height
Oven generates heat and with numbers oven installed adjacent to each other heat generate would be substantial hence roof height from the oven roof should be more than 30 ft . Better if packing hall is differentiated through partitions . Roof could be of metallic sheet with natural ventillation concept .

Fuel storage and safety
What ever fuel you select as per the costing and availability do check the safety angle and legal provision. LPG and LDO storage requires fire safety and fire hydrants and these must be installed in the storage area .Its highly recommended to keep these storage tank as far from the main production building .

Storage Area
Have provision for raw material , finished good , workshop , lab , office s , You can make mezzanines floor for these requirements .

Traffic movement - In bound and Out bound
Space for movement of truck carrying raw material and Finished good

Gelantinization and Dexterization - Bakery Glossary

Bread manufacturing have two important process in baking which are related to starch these are
Gelantinization
Dexterinization

Gelantinization is the process where starch is heated in presence of water .This process occurs inside the bread crumb which is soft and starch is in molten state . When the temperature reaches about 85° C, a colloidalsolution is obtained in which the amylose and amylospectin molecules arecompletely dispersed in the water. This sequence of events is known as
geíatinization.When bread is cooled then this starch remains in semi solid -semi liquid gel.

Dexterinization is the process where starch is heated in absence of water .It results into solid crust formation at the top of the bread .Temperature required for dexterinization is 225 deg c and above

Interstate Bakeries Corporation - Bakery Manufacturers-A profile

IBC - Interstate Bakeries Corporation is Americas largest wholesale bread and snack cakes manufacturer.Its has got around 39 bakeries units spread over entire USA . With 21000 employees and around 700 bakery outlets .

Major products : Breads , Cup cakes ,Fruit pie , Muffins , Donuts . Different bread brands with unique recipes are Wonder breads,Home made breads ,Merita breads , Beefsteak breads,Butternut breads ,Sweetheart bread , Millbrook bread , Holsum breads


Major Brands : Few IBC brands have become icons in bakery products millions of Americans relish these products every day eg Twinkies, Ding Dongs, HoHos, Sno Balls, Donettes, WonderBread, Hostess Fruit Pies and recent 100% Nature Prides breads with no preservatives .

HQ : 6031 Connection Drive, Irving, TX 75039,USA

GYROSCREEN - A perfect equipment for screening flour

Bakery manufacturers have to sift flour before mixing application . Conventional method for screening flour for forieng particles and infestation was to pass on the flour from a sifter a screen made of wiremesh and collect the flour from the bottom of the hopper , but for new technology where production are very large and volume of flour to be screened is more then these vibratory gryoscreens are used with great success . Sifters application was manualy in many cases and rate of screening very slow now with these vibratory gyroscreen we can screen large amount of flour for process .

Principle
It works on the pricnicple that when flour is subjected to vibratory motion the larger particles tend s to shift to periphery of the screen where the smaller particles drops to the next level . There are two or three layers of mesh of different sizes normally 38 , 36 , 34 , 32 as per the requirement .

How it works
Vibro screen are driven by a special type of vertically mounted motor having eccentric at the upper & lower end of the shaft. Rotation of out of balance top weight causes vibration in Horizontal plane whereas the rotation of lower weight causes tilt & vibrations in vertical plane.

Major manufacturers of gyroscreen in India are
Seperation Engineers India
Premium Vijimech Pvt Ltd

Popular Web sites on bakery industry

Please find popular websites for bakery industry . This could help you getting specific information on subjects like ingredients , packaging ,machinery and equipment .

U.K

http://www.fabflour.co.uk/

http://www.grainchain.com/

http://www.ceres.bakery.co.uk/

http://www.bod.bakery.co.uk/

http://www.bakersfederation.org.uk/

http://www.masterbakers.co.uk/

http://www.bakeryinfo.co.uk/

http://www.bsb.org.uk/


Australia

http://www.asb.org.au/


Germany

http://www.grossbaecker.de/

http://www.wissensforum-backwaness.de/

http://www.baeckerhandwrk.de/


France

http://www.bougangerie.net/


USA

http://www.bakeryonline.com/

http://www.aibonline.com/

http://www.wheatfoods.org/

Few other popular sites are

http://www.bougard.fr/
http://www.picardovens.com/
http://www.koma.com/
http://www.bakeryproducts1.com/
http://www.woodheadpublishing.com/
http://www.bakingbusiness.com/
http://www.worldbakers.com/

India
http://www.bakerybazar.com/

Submit or add your url if yo find any interesting website on bakery industry

Flour and Sugar - Explosive material

All bakery manufacturing units which handles flour and grinded sugar must take preventive steps for sugar and flour dust . Flour and sugar are explosive material with following factors increase the possibility of an explosion such as

• Combustible dust
• Dispersion
• An oxidiser (such as air)
• Confinement
• Ignition source

Flour in most of bakeries are now is done through bulk handling where wheat flour are stored in large silos . Conveying is done through pneumatic conveyors its in these pipelines that explosion might happens . Filters bags are also used in these bulk handling of flour which are also explosion zone in bakery .Electrostatic arrestors has to be installed on these areas to prevent explosion .
Similarly sugar grinding are done in house for most of the bakery plants . Sugar when grinded becomes charged and with given atmosphere can result in explosion . Electrostatic arrestors and earth should be provided to sugar grinder as well as the filter bag stations which are installed to prevent dust to disperse in surrounding .

How to increase biscuit oven output

Biscuit manufacturers have many options to increase their oven output with few changes in their existing set up . These steps are applicable for big or medium biscuit plants which have traveling ovens .

Following steps can be implemented
Increasing moulders /cutters rows and columns.
Increasing the rows and columns in the moulder or cutter to for better utilisation of oven band surface area .Its has been observe that moulder and cutters does not utilise the entire surface area and margins are left on sides on the oven band .

Increasing the moulder/cutter speed ie low baking time
Temperatures of oven zone can be adjusted so that the baking time is reduced and the speed of band can be increased in tandem with gauge roll and cutter /moulder speed .

Adding additional oven zone ( Increasing the biscuit oven length )
Increasing the oven length is another options where we can increase the output of biscuit plant . This requires oven manufacturers to add another section at delivery end and adjusting cooling conveyors and calculating the packing machines capacities to cater increase in biscuit oven output .If required additional packing machines can be installed .

Installing Radio Frequency Dryers at the delivery end of the biscuit oven .
RF Dryers can be installed at the delivery end which reduces the moisture content of the biscuit coming out from the oven hence allowing operators to increase the oven band speed .

One has to calculate the packing machines capacities to handle these increased output and check whether packing machines can pack these biscuits or not ,If not then additional packing machine can be installed . In semi automatic plants the feeding process of the machine has to be checked whether feeders can handle this increased volumes as this operation is manual.Speeds of biscuit plant are interlinked with each other .Hence one has to see whether speeds can be achieved through adjustment in the frequency drives or other combination of gear box and sprockets are required .

Mixers capacities and Ingredients automation too have to checked whether increase speed matches with mixers capacities .

Cookies production could be increased by 20-25%

Baker perkins have developed a wire cut depositor which on placing on top of oven band makes nested pattern instead of conventional straight pattern which takes more surface area of the oven band . Nested pattern results in more cookies per line . The "Angled world wire cut " when installed at 30 deg in reference to oven band gives maximun output due to nested pattern . Installing Angled World wire cut could result in more output without extending oven length as other method to increase the production .

Other feature included in Baker Perkins Angled World Wire Cut are
weight control
ease for cleaning
Fast and easy product change over(The filler block and die combination can be removed rapidly and easily via a clam shell head, reducing the time required for both cleaning and changeover. Operation is easy, with a choice of controls from simple push buttons to full recipe control)
Angled World Wire cut can be used for wide variety cookies ,filled , folded cookies.

Pic courtesy - Baker Perkins



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Small Packs and Less Weight -Strategies to combat Economic Slowdown

All Major bakery manufacturers in India has adopted twin strategies to tackle economic slowdown and rising cost of raw materials . If consumers have notice that even if they are paying the same price of the same brand and pack the weight has been reduced to few grams . These weight reduction method is the best method for bakery manufacturers as it helps them to avoid raising product price .

Britannia , ITC , Parle they all have adopted this strategies the 100gm packs are reduced to 90g,85g,or 65g Similarly 200g packs are reduced 181 g, 175g etc . These process of weight reduction doesn't cost much to the manufacturers as only packaging material needs to be changed or in case in addition to packing changes dimensions of products are also changed . Few manufacturers have also diluted the recipes of their brands to cope with increasing price pressures from raw material or substituted raw material of lower cost .

Small packs in denomination of Rs 2 , Rs 3 , Rs 5 have been launched by all major companies . you can get biscuits and cakes in small pack s .Manufacturers have reasons to do this as economic slowdown has impacted consumers buying habit .People are reducing expense s on snacking and other s non essential food items .Competition in bakery sector is so fierce that any price increase has negative effect and consumers readily switch's over to the competitors brand .

Vaporizer a critical equipment in LPG Storage tanks for bakeries

Mid size and large bakery division which runs on lpg as fuel have few critical months during winter seasons when temperatures are below 10 deg c . Operations are effected by low pressures of lpg and LPG storage tanks are topped up even with volume of tank being 70-75 % . This is more evident in colder regions . Most of the companies have installed Vaporizer s in their Lpg storage tanks installation . There are cases of production losses due to sudden drop in pressure . Rate of Vaporization is impacted by wetted surface of the tank ie size or the volume of lpg in the tank and ambient temperature .



In summer the liquefied gas converts into gas in faster rate due ambient temperature at higher levels ,hence pressure at burner ends is maintained . Winters brings problem to plant operators as they have to monitor the tank level round the clock and inform the lpg supplier for emergency supply as certain cracker varieties which require s more heat ie when the rate of consumption of lpg in the ovens is higher than the rate of vaporisation then problem starts and burners would trip . Manufacturers are suggested to install vaporizers at their Lpg storage tanks . It would have some initial cost but would save production loss and stress to the materials deptt . One solution is to have larger storage tanks or additional storage tanks but its has its own limitation and blocks money . Here comes advantage of an Vaporizer



Vaporizers helps in following way

• A Vaporizer is essentially a boiler that does not build pressure.
• LPG enters the vaporizer as a liquid and exits as a gas.
• Vaporizers are an integral component in a variety of LPG and propane systems, and are suitable for any number of applications.
• Vaporizers do not build additional pressure, but provide protection against the refrigeration affect that causes frosting and loss of pressure.
• Propane retailers benefit from being able to make less frequent, larger volume fills.
• Using a vaporizer eliminates re-condensation of vapor in the supply lines that can create a hazardous situation.
• Eliminates tank "freeze-ups" that result in production losses or delays.
• Vaporizers allow you to utilize 100% of the LP-Gas in your tank/cylinder, decreasing delivery frequency and overall costs.
• Eliminates heavy ends accumulations in tanks.
• Provides a constant supply of vapor at temperatures down to -40 degrees Celsius.
• Eliminates distillation of LPG when vaporizing Propane/Butane mixes.
• Allows you to significantly increase the capacity of your system without adding additional tanks.

Its highly recommended to install vaporizers at your factory/plant .

Biscuits / Cookies Preferred over other bakery products-Poll survey

A recent survey conducted by bakerybazar blog shows cookies and biscuit as most preferred bakery product than any other . Cookie and biscuit polled around 50% of votes where as cakes , pastry , donuts and pizza were ranked lower in preference . They polled 16% each .

Salt reduction and fortification with Iodine - A priority for bread manufacturers

Apart from recent debate over folic acid fortification of bread other issue which requires bread manufacturers attention is Salt reduction and fortification of salt with iodine in certain countries



Low salt breads

Salt has been responsible for many heart disease ,hence low salt intake has been recommended by doctors to stay healthy . Ireland food safety authority ( FSAI) has recommended 4g of salt intake a day where as present level Irish people are consuming salt 9.56g of salt per day. Earlier experiments of bread manufacturer to reduce salt was rejected by consumers . Irish government has not made any compulsory reduction of salt level laws .

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Iodine fortification of salt .
Bread manufacturer in New Zealand would now have to use Iodized salt in their products as Iodized salts has been made mandatory in New Zealand ( Food Standard Australia New Zealand). Iodine is one of the essential nutrients for body metabolism and thyroid gland can malfunction due to deficiency of Iodine . This results in low intelligence in new born babies and young children.

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Popular Russian Bakery and Confectionery Brands

• Few days back I received a mail from a Russian friend named Alex of Fis- engineering firm giving details of famous Russian Confectionery and baked goods producers .Russian and erstwhile Soviet Confederation .
  To name few
• Rusproduct
• Brother grinn
• Dominique
• Flight
• Persona
• Krem Sufle
• Kako
• Harvest 92
• Sweet Country
• AMTA
• Navashinsky Bread
  
  Thanks , Alex
  ( http://www.fis-engineering.ru/pages/grants )