A food ingredient manufacturer producing cooked starch experienced significant safety and efficiency challenges with its existing batch mixing process. Operators were manually lifting and dumping heavy sacks of dry starch powder into a large batch tank using scaffolding and ladders — a practice that posed a serious safety hazard due to repetitive lifting, elevated work platforms and airborne dust.
In addition to the safety risk, the blending method required extended recirculation and agitation time to fully hydrate and disperse the starch, extending batch cycle times and limiting production throughput.
The company sought a solution that would eliminate hazardous manual handling, improve operator safety, and reduce overall process time without compromising product quality.