Custom coffee conveyor an instant success

In its production facility, US-based company Eight O’Clock Coffee had been using mechanical and dilute-phase pneumatic conveyors to move whole bean and ground coffee from roasters to the packaging equipment.

Seeking to improve efficiency and increase productivity, Eight O’Clock Coffee installed a new high-speed packaging system at its plant. The addition of the new packaging equipment required an additional conveying system that could transfer coffee from 11 roasters to bagger hoppers above the packaging equipment while minimising material degradation.

Eight O’Clock Coffee engaged Spiroflow to design a customised conveying solution to support the packaging system.

The automated Cableflow Tubular Drag Conveying system supplied by Spiroflow transfers coffee from multiple roasters at the touch of a button. It gently moves whole beans and ground coffee to the packaging line at a rate of over 4.5 t/h.

Eight O’Clock Coffee Plant Manager Richard Holiday said: “Tubular drag conveying is a slow moving system that allows us to gently convey a lot of coffee. It’s very reliable and dependable and our operators love it.”

Other features Holiday cites as beneficial include the tubular drag conveyor’s ability to make directional changes, its slide gates that allow material to go to several different machines, its gentle conveying for whole beans and its clean-out cylinder. This cylinder allows the coffee to be easily drained into a tote with no need to connect pipes, drains or hoses, which the previous system required.

Designed to fit into the existing plant footprint, the conveying system runs with minimal operator interaction for optimum productivity, eliminates dust in compliance with OSHA, improves sanitary operations with advanced handling techniques and provides Eight O’Clock Coffee with a rapid return on its investment.

Spiroflow has now supplied six tubular drag conveyors to Eight O’Clock Coffee. All utilise 304 stainless steel cables with UHMW polyethylene discs and are fitted with Spiroflow’s Dynamic Automatic Rope Tensioning system (DART), which maximises cable life and minimises operator maintenance.

The conveyors and process equipment are fully automated and integrated with a central controller, allowing remote control and monitoring of the entire process from one location. Using the controller interface, an operator enters the code for one of the company’s coffee products and pushes the start button. The controller then automatically opens and closes the necessary valves, and the conveying system moves the beans or ground coffee through the production process from the roaster to the packaging system.