As your business continues to grow, you may find that using bags of dry ingredients becomes increasingly more costly and cumbersome. An automated dry bulk system allows you to efficiently store, sift, weigh and accurately deliver ingredients to your mixers. Typically, a bulk system becomes an attractive investment when weekly usage reaches 50,000 pounds. Throughout our history, the Fred D. Pfening Company has been a key partner for our customers as they transition from bag to bulk.
What are the advantages?
- Reduces cost of ingredients
- Improves ingredient accuracy in recipes
- Reclaims valuable floor space devoted to packaged bag storage
- Reduces labor costs from manual handling of bagged ingredients
- Reduces waste by eliminating paper bags
- Improves production efficiency
- Monitors inventory
- Reduces risk of injury
What are the costs?
Automated dry bulk ingredient systems require storage vessels, pneumatic conveying equipment, instrumentation, and controls. When considering an upgrade from bag to bulk, a thorough analysis should be conducted to determine the costs associated with operation of the system. Besides the capital investment, the cost maintenance and cleaning, spare parts and consumables, utilities, and delivery should also be considered.
Not ready for bulk?
If ingredient usage levels do not justify investment in a bulk system, a solution is often a semi-automatic bag loading station. While an operator manually loads bags of ingredients into a bag dump station, the system becomes automated by pneumatically conveying product to a scale hopper for weighing and delivery to the mixer. Pfening bag dump systems are designed to provide ease of use, reliability, and scalability. Bag dump systems are easily incorporated into future bulk system.
The Pfening team is available to assist you with project analysis to determine if bulk is for you. Please contact a Pfening Sales Engineers for additional information.