Shear advantage as Steric blends in IBCs

Steric Trading, an Australian-owned food, beverage and non-food manufacturing company, produces products like beverage powders, toppings in many flavours, maple flavoured syrups, packet soups, lemon and lime juices and a wide variety of wet sauces.

In order to maintain or improve its market share, Steric realised the need to invest in the future by improving its dry powder manufacturing process; part of this requirement was to blend its dried powder products in house, which was previously carried out by subcontractors.

Steric stipulated that the powder handling system had to be cost effective and Good Manufacturing Practice compliant. One vital requirement was that the mixer needed to be suitable for the various recipe formulations now and ones developed in the future. Some of these formulations are purely dry and some consist of liquid or oil additions.

The Matcon IBC Batch Blender was selected as it provides a homogenous mix of various dry solids with varying bulk densities and characteristics. The blender tumbles the IBC 360° causing the contents to flow over each other. When liquid or oil addition is required, there is a separate special high shear IBC lid with high-speed agitator blades that rotate at 1000-4000 rpm during the blender tumbling action and can disperse the liquid and break lumps completely. Many food ingredients and global flavour manufacturers view this high shear IBC lid coupled with the advantages of IBC blending as a major advantage in their mixing process.

Besides this feature, other advantages of the IBC batch blending process included improved overall equipment effectiveness; improved flexibility; no cleaning of the blender at all as the IBC is the blending vessel; offline cleaning of the IBC; a completely dust-tight operation; and there is zero cross-contamination between batches.

The manufacturing process is batch based using Matcon’s Intermediate Bulk Container (IBC) technology. IBC technology allows the batch formulation, mixing and packing processes to be completely de-coupled, as separate stand-alone processes. The process manufacturing involves the pre-weighing of minor ingredients into bags/boxes; dispensing from the flow booth to minimise dust (creating a safe and clean working environment complying with all OHS regulations); formulation (major and minor ingredients) - from sack tip station direct into IBC filling; IBC batch blending; IBC discharging to bulk bags; and IBC cleaning.

Matcon was awarded a contract for the design, supply, installation and commissioning of the IBC and blending system at Steric’s Villawood facility and the plant has been in production since November 2009.