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Jar line is a royal flush

Universal Foods' Red Star Yeast Div. boosts production five-fold with a new jar line. Nitrogen flushing consistently reduces headspace oxygen below 1%.

Arotating plate ?broadcasts? or spreads yeast into a bisected funnel (above, inset) that channels the flow of yeast into two ja
Arotating plate ?broadcasts? or spreads yeast into a bisected funnel (above, inset) that channels the flow of yeast into two ja

A new nitrogen-flush jar filling line is churning out 4-oz jars of yeast at speeds up to 80/min with headspace oxygen levels consistently under 1% at Universal Foods' Red Star Yeast Div., Milwaukee, WI.

The popularity of home bread machines in recent years has meant that consumers are buying more yeast and in bigger quantities than ever before. While Red Star continues to offer its venerable 7-g foil packets, it needed to upgrade its aging jar line to keep up with surging demand for the larger sizes.

Aside from a slow 16 jar/min output, the old line relied on an imperfect vacuum-flushing system that removed oxygen inconsistently, resulting in residual oxygen headspace levels of 3.5%. Like beer, the shelf life of yeast depends on protection from oxygen, moisture, heat and light. Also like many beer manufacturers, Universal uses amber glass jars for packaging its product.

The new system, running for about a year, is fast enough to keep up with demand for the 4-oz jar without even coming close to its capacity, according to Bob LaJoice, packaging engineer. It runs a single shift, three days per week; the old line often spilled over into expensive second shifts.

Even better, the new line has allowed the company to bring in-house the packing of its 7-oz jars that it had been contracting out. This reduced packaging costs by 90% for this size.

The heart of the new system is a two-head, in-line auger filler from Spee-Dee Packaging Machinery (Sturtevant, WI). LaJoice claims that of several models of fillers he tested, Spee-Dee was the only one that could consistently hit the 75 jar/min target he set. That's due, says LaJoice, to advanced timing techniques accomplished by Spee-Dee's PC-based control.

"They had a concept of timing where they would trigger the fill in advance of the bottle being there," LaJoice explains. "So as the jar is coming down the line, it just happens to be right under the nozzle as the yeast drops into the jar. You pick up some seconds on each cycle. And when you're filling two bottles at a time, it is possible to do the seventy-five to eighty bottles a minute with an in-line filler."

Spee-Dee estimates its proprietary PC-based controls allow the system to gain an extra 15% in speed. The speed capability didn't carry a premium cost compared to the other machines LaJoice had been considering. In fact, says LaJoice, "Spee-Dee had the best price."

Nitrogen flushing less than 1%

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