Maximum hygiene with the revamping of the top quality pasta plant!

Another plant, another challenge.
Updating an existing system, maximizing the level of sanitation.
This is the request made by a company, an acknowledged leader in the production of pasta.
A stimulating and complex request, which is intended to improve the quality and logistics of the establishment in the Campania region.
It is a system designed to produce short pasta, which has been running for 30 years, but requires progressive renovation, and for which the customer asked for a revamping intervention, a modern and effective renovation to the plant engineering part between the production line and the packaging.

Two key words

• HYGIENE: it was essential to create a system with extremely high hygiene performance and thereby without any “powder entrapment” gaps;
• SAFETY: since the establishment is in a highly earthquake-prone area, it was necessary to guarantee maximum safety, solidity, and stability, as required by regulations in force.

These key words have driven us to work on completely innovative and avant-garde design. In fact, the choice was to propose a monobloc silo made entirely of stainless steel as opposed to the most common systems made with “sandwich panels” with a multilayer wood core covered in stainless steel or plastic laminate.
Was it a hazardous gamble?
Definitely not. The proposal was made by contemplating a series of accurate thermo-technical analysis of the production environment, which resulted in a balance between humidity and adequate temperature such as not to reach the so-called “dew point”, thereby bypassing the much-feared condensation.
Creating a monobloc system enabled us to have perfectly smooth, watertight inner walls and the outer part of the reinforcing elements made without horizontal surfaces to drastically reduce the accumulation of powder residues and facilitate cleaning.

From a production layout point of view, we have introduced a storage system made up of 14 new silos, each 14m³, a new conveyor line, a new elevator line, and a new packaging line.
However, the innovative contribution given to the project did not stop at the design phase and the definition of the new layout, but also involved the assembly and installation phase in progress in these weeks. In fact, the intervention is proceeding according to a time schedule developed as a result of planned work aimed at not interfering with the production process, taking into account that it is forbidden to operate with several overlapping work units in the company and, at the same time, containing machine downtimes.
We, therefore, opted for a “surgical inclusion” in a highly regulated and complex production environment.
The first phase concerned the installation of the new monobloc silos (with infeed from a 4,000 kg production line and two outfeed lines for packaging, each of which 8,000 kg).
The next phase envisages integration with new conveyor lines in a highly articulated area and occupied by the existing systems, electric ducts, and various piping.
Once the mechanical installation has been completed, the system’s electrical part and the software will be completed, to then proceed with the start-up in January 2020. This will be followed by the testing phase and subsequent final testing, which is earmarked for March.

A highly articulated work, which still requires much to do, but the hypotheses are excellent since, in the end, the needs of our customer can be considered substantially fulfilled.