The customer decided to relocate its gum production capacity form Ireland to Turkey. Most of the old equipment was relocated to Turkey by the customer, except the ingredient handling for fat. These fats are used in manufacturing of artificial sweetener that goes in the recipe of chewing gum. The used type of fat was behaving more as a high melting point wax, requiring temperatures up to 110 °C for melting. This is unusual for regular food industry solutions. Initially, in Ireland, fat was delivered molten by truck, but in eastern Europe this was not possible. The wax blocks needed to be melted and stored.

The greatest outcome of the project is the contribution of improved line General Efficiency factor of the line, much higher than the calculated target, during the first production days. The line was expected to reach 65% efficiency, but achieved 82%.

Challenges & Actions:

The challenges that have been overcome, were:

• the high risk of product hardening,
• no known best practice in the industry
• very limited available space,
• the risk of inter-confounding of fats by the operators,
• very tight accuracy of dosing,

These have been addressed by developing:

• double jacketing for all piping components, including valves,
• new approach space-saving design,
• a poke-yoke system for operators,
• a precise pumping system,
• high accuracy dosing system (dosing error under 1% – 0.005kg/h)

Deliverables:

• Melting equipment pressurized by nitrogen with non-heat-transmitting stirrer.
• Storage tanks that do not allow product crystallization.
• Highly accurate dosing and recirculation systems.
• Powerful and reliable heat sources.

The greatest outcome of the project is the contribution of improved line General Efficiency factor of the line, much higher than the calculated target, during the first production days. The line was expected to reach 65% efficiency, but achieved 82%.