In 2007, the UK’s largest snack food manufacturer challenged CovElec to devise a method of mixing vegetable oils and seasoning powders to spray as flavouring onto an extruded wheat collet (extruded shape).
After 4 weeks of R&D and several iterations and designs a prototype was put forward for trial. This proved to be successful with a couple of caveats, which took further development to understand the capability limitations.
8 weeks later 3 machines were manufactured and delivered to site for integration to the production line, these proved to be a success and have been running ever since.
With encouragement from the clients R&D and engineering teams, CovElec were asked to continue the development. From this point, the design never stood still; by 2009 a standalone fully integrated system had been manufactured and installed at one of the manufacturing sites in the North East of England.
The design continued to move forward with the emphasis on capability and capacity to take into account the various seasoning powders and high output extruders at the remaining sites.
2011 saw the pinnacle of this specific design when 3 mixers were built for one of the largest snack plants in the West Midlands. These fully integrated mixers, each with the capability of 120% of the extruder output have significantly delivered savings through improved yields and drastically reduced seasoning related customer complaints.
