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2006-07-27 News Headlines
Buhler extrusion lines
leads to success in niche markets
The Rubin Mill in Lahr in the southwestern part of Germany has successfully
established itself as a maker of niche products with the process know-how
of Buhler extrusion lines.
The Rubin Mill is a mid-size company with a history of over 320 years.
After existing for more than 200 years as a “very small flour mill,”
it added an oat mill in 1948 and a feed manufacturing facility to its
operations in 1968. At the end of the seventies, the company built a new
mill with a grinding capacity of 75 t/24h. Last year, it expanded its
range of production equipment by adding another extrusion line for making
direct-expanded breakfast cereals and cornflakes.
Find Information and Suppliers of extrusion systems.
New business fields
At the end of the eighties, the market situation forced the Rubin company
management to create “added value.” The oat mill benefited
from the emerging “muesli” wave, which prompted the company
to construct a new oat mill together with Buhler. Since then, its capacity
has doubled.
In the petfood sector, the Rubin Mill set its focus on the extrusion process.
In 1988, the first installation equipped with a Buhler DNDG 62mm twin-screw
extruder went into service for the production of petfood and fish feed.
The company was able to utilize the existing distribution channels so
that the plant capacity soon had to be increased. For this purpose, a
125mm machine of type DNDH was purchased.
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The heart of the new plant:
a Buhler BCTG 62mm twin-screw extruder. Click
Go for High resolution image. photo: Buhler AG
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Two additional extruders
Since muesli sales were rising steadily, Rubin decided to produce its
own additional ingredients. This required the purchase of yet another
extruder. The new line comprised a second Buhler DNDG 62mm twin-screw
extruder with a drying system at the end. It was designed to allow direct-expanded
products to be made for processing into muesli mixes and cereal bars.
Word of Rubin Mill’s competence in food extrusion spread rapidly.
Demand for additional food ingredients rose. The company management decided
to continue growth in the same direction and to invest in yet another
extrusion line. This system was focused on the production of ingredients
for the bakery product and convenience food industries, including modified
flour, starch, and breading. The heart of this line is a Buhler DNDF 93mm
twin-screw extruder.
Specializing in extruded products
Today, the Rubin Mill has evolved into a leading maker of extruded products.
The customer structure of the Rubin Mill is very broad. It includes makers
of breakfast cereals, cereal bars, muesli, cookies, chocolate, and bakery
prod ucts as well as dairy products. The Rubin Mill specializes in niche
products. “Class, not mass” is the motto. The company focuses
on relatively small lot sizes of a large range of products. Last year,
it offered over 80 different products made using the twin-screw extrusion
process.
As a consequence of this development, the company management decided in
2005 to put another extrusion line into service. Sticking to the principle
that it is “better to operate several small machines to make different
products than one large high-capacity unit,” the machine selected
was again a Buhler BCTG 62mm twin-screw extruder.
Less space
The requirements that the Buhler plant engineers had to meet were high.
The line was to be installed in a new annex adjoining an existing hall
and measuring 40 by 10 meters. Account had to be taken of the fact that
the 400 square meters would also have to accommodate a raw materials storage
section, a control room, and expansion areas for receiving two additional
extrusion lines beside the current system. Moreover, the layout of the
system had to meet the customer’s special needs. It was designed
to allow reconfiguration within a very short time to enable a wide variety
of products to be made.
Heart of the system
The heart of the system is the Buhler BCTG twin-screw extruder with a
screw diameter of 62 millimeters. This machine offers high torques as
well as high screw speeds and pressures to cover the wide range of applications.
An OTW fluid-bed dryer dries the extruded products or predries the pellets
for making flakes. A modular DNTW fluid-bed dryer and toaster expands
and toasts the flakes. Another task was to adjust the control system.
Normally, the overall plant is controlled from the control room and the
extrusion process through a touchscreen attached to the machine. In response
to the customer’s request, the plant control system was also integrated
in the touch-screen operator terminal attached to the extruder. Thanks
to the high level of modularity of the system, the plant configuration
can be tailored to specific applications within a veryshort time and at
low cost.
Three-shift operation
The investment sum of about 2.5 million euros for the building and the
processing equipment have already paid off according to the management
of the Rubin Mill. Since its start-up in the summer of 2005, over 20 new
products have already been rolled out. Just like the other extrusion lines,
the new system is running in three work shifts. Together with Buhler,
Rubin now hopes that the two still vacant spaces in the new hall will
soon be occupied.
Find Information about Buhler AG.
Buhler is a global Technology Group and a system partner for the supply
of plant, equipment, and process know-how in the fields of Food Processing,
Chemical Engineering, and Die Casting, with some 6,200 employees worldwide.
Read a recent press release from Buhler about - 'UFA-Mischfutter AG to
invest in a modernization of its existing
animal feed manufacturing plant with Buhler food processing group
supplying the heart of the renovation project.'
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