Spiroflow and Cablevey Conveyors Collaborates with Oat Co.

Oat and Co._1170x658.jpg — Image courtesy of Cablevey Conveyors

Spiroflow and Cablevey Conveyors, operating as part of Automated Handling Solutions (AHS), have recently collaborated to provide Scottish oats producer, Oat Co., with a bespoke conveyor system. The solution has helped increased productivity and allowed Oat Co. to minimize hazardous dusting, maintain product integrity and meet hygienic requirements for food handling.

Oat Co. Scotland utilizes an oat mill specializing in gluten-free operations and needed to replace its existing bucket elevator for rolled oats with a new conveyor system. To meet food safety standards, the solution needed to be fully enclosed to ensure that the oat-based products were not contaminated with external foreign particles during the conveying process. The company also needed to eliminate "dead areas" where the product could accumulate and degrade. It also had to be designed to fit Oat Co.’s existing setup and integrate with its current oat mill.

The solution consisted of a Cablevey tubular drag conveyor system and a Spiroflow low-loading bulk bag filler with an integrated holding hopper. The tubular drag conveyor system delivers the rolled oats to the filler in an enclosed environment, minimizing both degradation and dusting. Incorporating an inspection camera monitoring system and clear inspection ports to ensure proper maintenance, the hygienic conveyor can be quickly cleaned using the dry wiper disc system to wipe away accumulating fine particles.

The bulk bag filler contains a low-loading ramp and low-profile pallet base to enable the unloading of filled bulk bags by pallet truck when a forklift is not available. The filler also minimizes dust with a reverse jet filter and fills by weight with its low-level weighing platform to minimize overfilling and product giveaways.

Oat Co.’s Ray Marquardt says, “We selected the Cablevey conveyor because it offered gentle conveying of our product within a totally enclosed conveying solution, thereby eliminating any chance of contamination by an external foreign body. The conveyor offered a much more hygienic solution than a bucket elevator, with little or no dust being generated internally or externally. Overall, the design of the system ensured perfect integration with the rest of our existing purpose-built plant.”