Firms want to save cleaning time – Foamico

22-Apr-2015 - Last updated on 23-Apr-2015 at 11:29 GMT

Tommy Rysholt Andersen CEO of Foamico

Food and beverage firms are looking to save time on total cleaning, meaning more production time, according to the CEO of Foamico.

Tommy Rysholt Andersen said being more efficient in cleaning means a factory can spend more time producing product.

Foamico is a producer of low pressure cleaning systems for the food and beverage industry based in Denmark.

It manufactures cleaning equipment used in different environments such as slaughterhouses, meat abattoirs, fish processing plants, dairies and breweries.

A typical installation in a food or beverage production environment consists of a booster(s), which provides pressurized water to a number of satellites.

Cleaning window

Rysholt Andersen said down time on the processing and filling equipment can be expensive.

“The trend right now is the cleaning window they have is narrower and narrower so they look to save time on total cleaning,” he told FoodQualityNews.

“We have developed a series of machines called NEXT where everything is dimensioned to extend the power from the machine and we do that by running 22 bars and we have the opportunity to go up to 100 litres per minute.

“This means that in the rinsing process, which is about 80% of the total clean process, you have the possibility to vary from 0 up to 100 metres per minute.”

Foamico introduced the NEXT DUAL Block Satellite for two user operation last month.

It features a smart switch function, one change-over handle for all functions, one inlet, three chemicals for each user and a range of up to 50 bar.

Traditional cleaning

Cleaning in a factory has been more or less the same for many years, said Rysholt Andersen.

“The traditional way to clean in a factory is you start rinsing and its typical tradition to rinse with about 30 litres per minute and this has been the same for 25 years,” he said.

“The next step is you lay out some foam which is a mix of water and chemicals and in low pressure systems like ours we mix it also with air to make it a sticky foam which you can put on all surfaces and it sticks for a certain time given the active part of the chemicals time to work. Then you rinse again and then you typically sanitise and sometimes you rise a third time and add an acid at the end.

“We are able to take three different chemicals into our system and have only one outlet.”

The NEXT system makes up about 80% of what is sold at the moment, he said.

“In the last two years we have worked on extending the product problem, we have different models, we have mobile units, satellites for two users, up to 40 bar mobiles and for OEM customers we have developed an automatic system which is based on NEXT.”

The firm also works with Grundfos on pumps and has the blueflux label on equipment, citing high energy efficiency as a benefit.

“Before I started the company I worked two years at Grundfos management then I saw the benefits of the Grundfos pump. We have already introduced the motor technology which gives up to 10% better efficiency on pumps.”

Rysholt Andersen said the food and beverage industry generally faces the same challenges whatever the sector.

“As long as it has something to do with food and beverage I think problems are similar and everyone wants to be more efficient and if you save, for instance, one hour cleaning time each day then it is easy for each factory to see how much more they could produce.

“Industry is looking more and more on efficiency and being easier to use and in the future be more automatic. This is the next part we will develop in the Foamico company.”