Global support for Gold Peg’s continuous cooking systems

Australian company Gold Peg International manufactures continuous cooking systems that are distributed worldwide. First developed by company founder Bob Smith in the 1980s, the company’s RotaTherm® continuous cooking system continues to be the most sophisticated and technologically advanced direct steam injection continuous cooker in the world, and is available in a range of models for a wide variety of food applications.

Gold Peg’s clients include global companies with plants in many countries through to leading edge manufacturers with single or multiple plants.

Compared to batch cookers, continuous cooking systems offer a variety of features that ultimately allow food manufacturers to produce a cleaner, higher quality product, to do so more efficiently, and to reduce waste and energy usage.

Utilising a continuous direct steam injection cooking process, they can produce a higher volume of higher quality product in less time than a batch cooker.

The value of the RotaTherm continuous food processing system is in its key features:

• Non-stop production capability of up to 156 hours (or 6.5 days) before cleaning is necessary
• Flexible parameters to easily adjust cook temperature, heating profile, pressure, and cooling temperature
• A fully enclosed hygienic system resulting in improved product safety
• A full clean-in-place (CIP) system requires minimal intervention
• Optimally processes low to high viscosity products — homogenous or with large particulates — to pasteurised and UHT temperatures

While RotaTherm is Gold Peg’s flagship product, the company also manufactures the GPiCS continuous Mozzarella Cooker Stretcher, and the FreeTherm and ShearTherm batch cookers — all featuring Gold Peg’s world-leading accurate and flexible direct steam injection technology.

Made in Australia, delivered worldwide

In 2017, Hochland Natec GmbH joined forces with Gold Peg to bring two of the world’s largest and most reputable food processing equipment companies together. The fusion of Natec and Gold Peg creating the ‘Natec Network’ under the Hochland Group signalled a new and exciting future for food production.

With this influence, there was investment to streamline the design and build process of Gold Peg’s automated cooking equipment solely manufactured by the team in Victoria Australia, including all control and valve functionality.

Project value drivers for Gold Peg focused on their customer’s needs, delivering optimal process and equipment performance with minimised lead times. In order to deliver its sophisticated equipment worldwide, Gold Peg ensures that it provides ease of installation, commissioning and testing, therefore supporting multiple major control systems and network/fieldbus architectures, to meet the customer’s existing engineering standards.

It is equally important that the equipment can be serviced, and spares can be available, anywhere in the world where the systems are used.

For these reasons, Gold Peg’s RotaTherm continuous cooking system utilises Bürkert Type 8801 angle seat valves with a Type 8691 control head and Type 8802 globe valves with Type 8692 digital positioners. The valves are used for isolation and temperature control, as well as CIP isolation for the batch controller units.

Global support and universal integration

Bürkert was chosen to supply the valve technology for Gold Peg’s cooking systems partly because it is an international company that can provide service and support for its valve and control technology in any country where Gold Peg’s cooking systems are used.

The Type 8801 and Type 8802 are part of Bürkert’s ELEMENT Range. The ELEMENT actuators combine the engineering excellence of the classic actuators with a fresh look. Chemical resistance and solid modular connections mix with the beautiful lines of a stainless steel valve with no external tubes or connections. The ELEMENT actuators are built to take advantage by internal control air supply so, unlike any other actuator system, each time the actuator strokes the spring chamber is replenished by clean instrument air. This means, no corrosion of the actuator springs, no dirt inside the actuator, no humidity transmitted into the control head through the spindle, no biological contamination inside the actuator and longer life of the valve itself.

Highly cylindrical, precision-moulded parts reduce the chances of friction, making these actuators perfect for both on/off and control duties.

“I believe we have something very unique with the ELEMENT range,” stated James Emerson, National Food & Beverage Manager for Bürkert Australia. “It’s a proven performer in the food and beverage environment — with the ability to directly connect via the latest automation protocols — which makes the range hard to ignore for any project manager seeking to future-proof plant processes.”

Gold Peg uses these valves specifically for their hygienic applications, and their compact design makes them easy to integrate into the cooking machines. They are designed for decentralised automation and control of processes, supporting multiple network interfaces, including IO-Link, AS-Interface, EtherNet/IP, Profibus/Profinet, Modbus TCP, and Bürkert’s system bus (büS).

The housings of the Bürkert control heads and actuators are easy to clean and feature proven IP protection and chemically resistant materials for use in hygienic processing in the food, beverage and pharmaceutical industries.

“The Bürkert angle seat valves are a great fit with our equipment,” said Didier Henri, Project Engineer, Gold Peg International. “They perform the function needed, are reliable and low maintenance — all of which are important to the overall performance of our equipment and therefore the Gold Peg reputation.

“The valves are performant, reliable, versatile due to their integration with various control platforms and easily serviceable due to Bürkert having a worldwide representation.

“When a customer approaches Gold Peg with their standard equipment list, it is important to know that we have an existing relationship with Bürkert to support the customer and therefore be successful in the project.”