Watson-Marlow Bredel pumps help flavour popular extruded snacks

One of the leading suppliers in the bagged snack foods market, Red Mill Snack Foods have helped increase their production and ensure the high quality of their products by installing Watson-Marlow Bredel 700 series pumps to meter flavourings.

Unfailing, repeatable accuracy (+/- 0.5%) and ease of cleaning , added to reliability and low maintenance, are the keys to the long term success of Watson-Marlow Bredel peristaltic pumps at the Red Mill production facility in the West Midlands. The pumps handle some thirty different flavourings used in the extensive range of extruded maize snacks.

The powdered flavourings are blended with oil in a mixing kettle to produce the slurry, which is pumped to spray nozzles through 12.7mm pipework and a venturi system. Pump speed - and hence output - is adjusted manually in accordance with the number of extruders in service and the flavouring required.

The low shear pumping action and the ability to totally enclose the pumped media within the tube, ensures optimum levels of hygiene and product integrity. Whilst the ability to sustain volumetric accuracy, irrespective of changes in viscosity of the slurry, ensures that consistent dosage of the flavouring is maintained at all times.

At the end of a shift, or when flavourings are changed, the pumps are reversed to scavenge the lines and return residual product to the mixing kettles, so saving waste.