Increased Heating Control Maximizes Processing Flexibility & Efficiency

Rodem provides complete and innovative solutions to the processors who feed America.  Food, beverage, and dairy manufacturers from across the United States turn to Rodem to tap into decades of industry experience, access industry leading equipment and to utilize our solutions-based systems integration capabilities. 

Recently our Account Manager, Donald Baines, from Tennessee was able to provide the true Rodem experience to St. Clair Foods. St. Clair Foods is a Tennessee based company that manufactures dressings, dips, entrees, and salads for retail and food service.  Rodem helped St. Clair Foods design a new room to handle increased cheese production, which required a modified heating method, process kettles, lifts, controls, and utility equipment for heating media. 

The Challenge – Heating Method Created Production Bottlenecks

St. Clair came to Rodem seeking a solution for burn on issues they were experiencing during production. Historically, St. Clair had used steam as the heating media for their processor jackets. This method lead to fast heating but often resulted in burn-on issues for some heat sensitive products. 

The steam method for heating not only lead to burn-on issues, but also created a domino effect of other bottlenecks. Additional issues within the process as a result were:

• Agitation speed required extra attention
• Inconsistent product quality
• Excessive waste
• Undesirable downtime between batches for cleaning
• Limited processing flexibility for sensitive products

Fortunately, the project team at Rodem was there to help. Our team determined that additional control of heating media would prevent burn-on issues, maximize processing flexibility and eliminate subsequent problems as a result.

The Solution – Complete Control = Increased Production & Maximized Flexibility

St. Clair enlisted the expertise of Rodem for this project. Donald Baines, with the help of our SaniSmart Solutions team, created a method that would offer more control over cheese melting and heating. 

Donald Baines and Rodem’s engineers introduced hot water in place of steam for heating as a means to provide better temperature control for sensitive products. Rodem designed controlled heating and piping isolation that would allow the customer to select:

• steam only,
• steam preheating transitioning to hot water for final heating or
• hot water heating only.

The controlled heating and piping isolation solution allowed St. Clair to have complete control over their processes to minimize heat up time while preventing burn-on issues. The new processing room project utilized Chester-Jensen Cooker/Coolers and was accompanied by Thermaline hot water set, IPACS controls, twin-screw pump technology from Axiflow for cheese transfer and MTC bucket lifts to complete the turn-key solution.

The Benefits

The result was increased production, maximized processing flexibility and more. Not only was St. Clair able to prevent burn-on issues in their processing system with our solution, but they realized a variety of other benefits too. 

• Better product quality
• Reduced waste
• Less clean up time between batches
• PLC control of heating process instead of more manual control
• Added electronic storage for process data instead of paper charts used in the past.

Through the exceptional service of Donald Baines and the complete processing solution our team provided, the St. Clair facility will reap long-lasting benefits for years to come.

We thank St. Clair Foods for trusting our team with their process and look forward to the growth and flexibility this new method will provide your organization.

Request a consultation to speak to a Rodem representative about processing solutions today.