System upgrade for tea grower

Established in 1929, BOH Plantations in Malaysia account for 70% of all tea produced in Malaysia. With four tea gardens encompassing 1200 hectares, its annual production is around 4 million kg, translating to about 5.5 million cups a day.

Being one of the few vertically integrated tea companies in the world, BOH Plantations has operations ranging the entire spectrum of tea manufacture - from cultivation and processing to the packaging and marketing of its range of black teas. The company is accredited with ISO 22000 certification.

In order to maintain its prime position in the domestic retail market and expand into overseas niche markets, the company recently invested in its manufacturing process. The ‘key’ performance requirements for the equipment upgrade were: product quality, production flexibility and space utilisation.

The processing systems needed to be state of the art, with exemplary hygienic manufacturing and quality standards (homogeneity, product safety, cleaning ability). The manufacturing operation was to be designed to allow multiple recipe production simultaneously - this technique is sometimes known as ‘parallel processing’. Quick recipe changeover and cleandown (where necessary) also had to be considered. BOH wanted to use existing floor space for the new production area, which should allow for future expansion both in capacity and number of recipes being produced.

BOH has fully adopted Matcon’s ‘lean manufacturing’ philosophy of parallel processing in its new production facility. By installing a Matcon Cone Valve Intermediate Bulk Container (IBC) System, BOH has a flexible manufacturing facility, maximising throughput with minimum equipment investment. By operating independent ‘process modules’ and using the IBC as the ‘vehicle’ to move the product, overall equipment effectiveness (OEE) can be optimised, lowering the cost per kg produced.

The Matcon Formulation Bay (housing four major ingredient IBCs) doses the major ingredients automatically using Cone Valve technology in a gain-in-weight manner into the receiving batch IBC at floor level. The major ingredient IBCs on the formulation bay can hold a combination of several recipes without the need for changeover. Due to the quick and accurate discharge achieved with Matcon Vari-Stroke Discharge technology, there is no requirement for a secondary feeder. This makes the system easy to clean and allows for minimal downtime when ingredients need to be changed.

Minor ingredients are preweighed manually and added into the Batch IBC. Keeping this task manual provides high flexibility as there are many variations of minor ingredients. Formulation of the batch time is also shortened as this operation is done in parallel to the major ingredient batching.

BOH selected a Matcon IBC Blender as it achieves homogenous blends for a wide range of recipes using its 360º tumbling action. Many factors were evaluated including flexibility and product quality. As the IBC is the blending vessel, no cleaning of the blender unit is required (the IBC is cleaned offline), therefore the blender can mix several recipes without the need for cleaning and with zero contamination risk. This blender allows BOH to increase product quality, mix multiple recipes without any downtime and utilise minimal floor space.

A Matcon Discharge Station is installed above each packing line ensuring a controlled discharge without product segregation, maintaining the homogeneity of the blended product. This is again achieved with the use of Matcon Cone Valve Technology. To meet the demands of today’s volumetric fillers, the powder handling (refilling of the infeed hopper) became even more important. If refilling is not reliable and ‘steady’, the product bulk density will change (head load in the infeed hopper), affecting the accuracy of the filled sachet and speed of the machine. By using Matcon Cone Valve Technology, BOH achieve the desired throughput rate of the packer while maintaining product quality.

The system was installed in March 2011 and is now operational, and furthermore meets all of BOH Plantations performance requirements.