Cooling Tunnel At Leading Cheese Maker Alpenhain Proves Itself In The Field
Heidenheim, Baden-Wuerttemberg, Germany- The cheese maker Alpenhain, located in Lehen, placed an order for its high-bay warehouse with Voith Paper Air Systems in June of 2008 for a fully automatic, discontinuous fixed storage cell cooling tunnel with traversing carriage for the cooling of goods.
The cheese maker Alpenhain, placed an order for its high-bay warehouse with Voith Paper Air Systems in June of 2008 for a fully automatic, discontinuous fixed storage cell cooling tunnel with traversing carriage for the cooling of goods sold at the cheese counter. For the past six months, the cooling tunnel has been used with great success.
Alpenhain is a company rich in tradition and is among Germany's leading makers of cheese. Alpenhain holds the leading market position for baked cheeses such as baked Camembert, baked feta and baked mozzarella sticks. In order to anchor or expand this market leadership, investments were made in many areas, including an optimization of logistics as well as more efficient storage systems for the refrigeration of the products.
In order to implement these measures, Alpenhain commissioned IE Food Engineering, which is part of IE Engineering Group in Munich, Zurich and Geneva. The company specializes in making projects happen in the food industry. Under the direction of IE Food Engineering as the general contractor, a new high-bay warehouse with refrigerated and frozen sections, as well as a fully automatic fixed storage cell cooling tunnel was built.
Here, Voith Paper Air Systems made an important contribution by producing a fully automatic, discontinuous fixed storage cell cooling tunnel with traversing carriage for the cooling of cheese specialties for refrigerated display cases. The cooling tunnel has a capacity of 50 storage cells. The cool-down times determined for various reference products during the planning phase at the Voith pilot facilities have proven themselves in practice or were even surpassed. Currently, there are approximately 20 different kinds of cheese, with the most diverse of packaging sizes and designs, that are cooled in the cooling tunnel.
Jochen Völker, Head of Technical Project Management at Alpenhain, is fully convinced by the discontinuous system delivered by Voith: "It is exactly the right concept for our particular application." Thanks to the special air guide method, even critical packaged products can be refrigerated in the best way possible. The fully automatic traversing carriage guarantees the realization of product-specific storage periods in the cooling tunnel, thus providing the utmost in flexibility. Intelligent automation modules ensure that the cooling tunnel can be used in a way that optimizes energy use. A distinctive design feature of the tunnel is the way it has been constructed in an outdoor area. For subsequent production increases or products with longer cooling times, adequate spare capacity was taken into consideration to ensure that the cooling tunnel can be used in the best way possible in the long term to meet current market demands.
The pallet cooling system from Voith Paper Air Systems has proven itself in practical applications and is making an important contribution to quality assurance at Alpenhain.
SOURCE: Alpenhain