ABB drive serves up £20,000 in savings for gluten-free baker07 May 2010

Improved speed control on one of its production lines is enabling The Village Bakery to save £20,000 per year at its Abenbury Way site in Wrexham, which is the most advanced gluten-free facility in Europe.

Christien Jones, director and projects engineer at the firm, explains that the installation of an ABB general machinery drive, with IP66 high ingress protection, has delivered the cost savings on its new depositing line – a conveyor-based system that divides dough into the correct weights for its rolls and loaves.

Jones says the firm contacted ABB because it realised that improved speed control would boost line efficiency to the tune of £10,000 per year savings – but that the drive is now delivering twice that.

The first saving, he says, comes from is a 10% reduction in tin greasing agent. "The old drive was so slow and inaccurate that the machine had to start spraying the greasing agent before it 'saw' each tin. Now, more of the greasing agent ends up where it's supposed to," says Jones.

The ABB drive can also optimise the speed of the conveyor to match the size and throughput of different products more accurately. In this case the unit is programmed with four different speeds, leading to savings of around 25 percent in the running costs for the line.

Finally, though, having a second depositing line has reduced downtime, since production staff can shut down each line independently for cleaning. As the drive is protected to IP66, frequent wash downs are no problem.

Brian Tinham

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