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Case Studies
Case Studies

How Silverson helped a bakery company reduce waste and save millions of dollars

A baked goods manufacturer reached out to our Silverson team for guidance in helping address their huge amounts of waste. We have extensive experience helping companies incorporate sustainable practices like reclamation to quickly and efficiently reprocess waste product.

Silverson’s unique insight combined with our high shear mixing equipment has resulted in savings of $3,103,250 per year.

Reprocess materials in a matter of minutes

4,000 pounds of waste every single day

The production lines for the bakery’s English muffins run 24 hours a day. Their quality control system rejects any product that does not meet specifications in terms of diameter, shape, thickness and color. Those rejects had been automatically diverted off the production line and into waste, resulting in 2 tons of unsellable English muffins per day. Combined with additional waste from their other product lines, it quickly became a massive problem for the company and accounted for millions of dollars worth of rejected material annually.

Solution: repurpose the rejects

To try to reduce the amount of waste produced, Silverson’s team of mixing experts recommended reprocessing the rejected material to form a percentage of the ingredients for new products. By reducing the rejected English muffins down into a slurry, 10–15% of the formulation of each new batch can be made up of reclaimed material. Not only does this result in less waste, it also produces a higher quality product.

A representative from the bakery visited Silverson’s main headquarters to test this suggested process change. Our fully equipped Test Center allows customers to discuss their application with our experienced in-house technical staff and carry out testing new processes and mixers. For this specific application, we trialed a pilot-scale Disintegrator Plant incorporating a Bottom Entry mixer and a High Viscosity In-Line mixer.

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A couple of trials were performed, each with great results:

  • First, the English muffins were incorporated into 100 liters of water to see if a usable slurry could be produced. The Bottom Entry mixer was started and immediately disintegrated the English muffins into a porridge-like consistency.
  • The mixture was then passed through the In‑Line mixer producing a smooth, agglomerate-free slurry with the whole process taking less than 15 minutes.
  • Next, the process was tested with rejected tortilla wraps. The Bottom Entry mixer reduced them to a very smooth consistency with no agglomerates. Because of the smoothness, there was discussion of not using the In-Line mixer in the process, but it was passed through the In-Line to see the results and they were exactly as the client wanted.
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The result? More baked goods for less

The bakery realized that investing in Silverson’s high shear mixers would revolutionize their business and save them vast amounts of money. They placed an order soon after the trials. The increase in efficiency and overall productivity of our equipment has opened up further possibilities for the company, including attaining new contracts with suppliers which were not feasible before due to the enormous waste they already experienced with their previous production lines.

The company is so impressed with the results that they are planning to replicate Silverson’s suggested process with their additional products like naan bread and pita bread to reduce waste even further.

Are you looking to reduce waste and improve your bottom line?

Whether you want to optimize your existing process or need help developing a new one, with Silverson you can be certain you get the best equipment and application expertise for the job. Reach out below to arrange your very own trial or consult our team of experts about your specific bakery challenges.

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