Chicken Nugget Forming, Battering & Breading Line for a Frozen Food Brand in Colombia
Client
A known poultry/meat processing company and frozen food brand in Colombia.
Background
The client wanted their semi-automatic production line upgraded to full automation, with the hope of achieving better quality control over weight and texture.
Client’s needs
Complete processing line for automatic chicken nugget forming, battering and breading.
Results
The fully connected processing line completed the trial run with actual product, which convinced the client to sign the purchase order for complete processing line.
Challenges
- Uneven forming & weight: Ground chicken contains high levels of fat and moisture, which makes them easy to adhere. The old machines often cause not smooth demolding and adhesion to the mold, which results in uneven shape and huge weight differences, which greatly affects material cost and downstream standardized packing process.
- Uneven battering and breading: Traditional battering and breading machines often cause flour leak, overbattering and loose breading. Breadcrumbs would fall off in large quantity during the frying process which not only pollute frying oil but affect the color and crunchiness of the nuggets.
- Flour residues make cleaning harder: The old battering and breading machines often accumulated flour residue in the inaccessible areas like the bottom of the mesh belt and is hard to positively clean. Those hardened residue would require a lot of daily manual labor to remove the parts and use water to clean.
Solutions
- Smart high-pressure forming and damage-free demolding system The forming machine combines servo-controlled screw conveying and precision wire cut-off design. The forming machine is capable of high-pressure feeding and instant demolding using specialized molds in a short time. The thickness and weight are precisely controlled with a deviation of less than 1%. Therefore the nuggets can be cleanly cut without adhesion.
- Uniform curtain battering and high-velocity air knife for removal of excess loose crumbs During the breading process, Henco’s machines employ a multi-tier mesh belt circulation breading system with air knife. After battering, nuggets are coated in uniform breadcrumbs, and then go through blow-off process done by precisely adjusted air knife.
