At its site in Poland, free-from specialist Ultrapharm creates gluten-free bakery products and continuously adds to its high-quality product range. Since September 2019, the company has been doing so with the help of a new M-TA oven by MECATHERM.
Gluten-free products are the result of sophisticated formulations, first and foremost, with more than 20 compounds on average, joining forces to turn into successful bakery wares taste-wise, texture-wise, and with the desired nutritional profiles. For the baking process itself, the challenge stems from being able to cover a wide range of different products in small volumes. The oven has to handle a wide range of products in a growing market while optimizing operating costs, a critical concern when dealing with frequent product changeovers.
For French specialist MECATHERM, this describes its latest oven, the M-TA, designed with versatility in mind: “This oven can achieve very specific, custom baking curves for all kinds of products. It does this thanks to its modular design as it’s built with independent, compact heating modules (of max. 25 sqm) – meaning that the baker is able to follow a very precise temperature curve with the same oven. Besides, another characteristic is truly unique to this oven: each of its independent heating modules can provide no fewer than six different heating modes: from the top side, it can use convection, radiant heat, and a combination of both; from the bottom, you can select between convection and radiant heat,” Marie Laisne, product manager Ovens, highlights.
Fit for the job
For the product range it needs to process, Ultrapharm selected radiant heat, convection, and a combination of both at the top and only convection below, for its M-TA oven. This setup supports a high degree of flexibility to bake a wide range of goods, as the company bakes products on trays and molds and the additional bottom-level heating sources were not needed. Alternatively, the M-TA helps optimize operating costs, in this case, thanks to its ability to quickly react to different products, with varying baking curves. It takes the M-TA 20 minutes to reach the temperature of 100°C, which it can also lose in 30 minutes when needed, as it is equipped with a fast cooling function.
Consistent baking quality is another requirement that the M-TA meets along its entire width. This is made possible by controlling air circulation to always remain homogenous inside the baking chamber. When baking by convection, hot air comes in high and low; the air exchanges heat with the product and returns to be reheated with the burner. “This flow of hot air could cause uneven product coloration if not precisely controlled,” she notes. Moreover, the oven can quickly and automatically adapt to the product load to avoid overheating and minimize product loss, respectively.
“For the customization of Ultrapharm’s M-TA, no extra features were added; instead, the best options for the company’s production requirements were selected. This oven is 2.4m wide and a little over 13m long, with three modules and a baking surface of 32sqm,” Laisne details. It features steam injection at the oven entry, for crusty bread, and steam injection in the air circuit, to control hydrometry in the baking chamber. The conveying solution chosen here is simple, exclusively mechanical, as it does not need lubrication or adjustments in terms of tensioning or centering. A steel grid belt is used, an open mesh that will support fast convective heating from the bottom. This was the best option for Ultrapharm as its products are baked in trays or pans.
A new feature that helps control the chimney operation is also included; the extraction of fumes and vapors is controlled via the HMI, but the operator can also choose to go over or under the balance recommendation provided by the oven, to achieve certain effects. “The close control of the chimney has a direct and strong impact on energy consumption,” the specialist underlines.
An upgrade
Before switching to the M-TA, Ultrapharm had been using rotative rack ovens for its production, artisan ovens that only offer convection heating. The choice was made at iba, when the oven debuted, and the company saw it in action. Commissioning followed, and the installation was on course about six months later. This upgrade benefitted the Polish site in terms of baking precision, which can be achieved with radiant heat featured by the M-TA; operating costs were also significantly improved, as the constant opening of the oven’s doors to make small volumes of varied goods was taken out of the equation along with the heat losses it incurred.
The upgrade to an industrial oven came as a natural progression from a line-up of artisan ovens added over time, and it also helps maintain product consistency. At this stage, the M-TA is not integrated into an automated production line at the site and is used stand-alone. It is currently loaded and unloaded manually; however, it is always possible to take the next step and include automation for these stages as well. The baking process is also safer, as hot racks do not need to be handled anymore.
Baking times were also reduced when switching to the M-TA tunnel oven, MECATHERM’s specialist highlights, while being able to fully adjust for different baking curves in each of its modules. For Ultrapharm, this means baking pastries, breads, rolls, pizza, and cakes – and the list is expanding with new products regularly. For example, steam injection is used for crusty bread to support product growth, crust structure, and final gloss; while tin bread requires intense heat all around the product, which is best provided by convection. In the latter scenario, if the mold is not subjected to enough energy, a curving effect may occur after depanning, or uneven coloration on the sides of the product; the answer to these problems is convective heat. For pizza, for example, intense heat bursts are required, with very high temperatures, from over 2 to more than 10 minutes, depending on the type and variations.
After installation, the production and maintenance teams went through training which typically lasts two days, to cover the oven’s design, working principles, and operation guidelines. Since then, the French technology specialist has been supporting Ultrapharm on certain issues, from technical to preventive maintenance or feature upgrades that become available. “For example, a service feature is now in development, the M-Care, which is a preventive maintenance tool that would notify operators. We will have service probes throughout the oven to continuously gather and analyze data. Deviations are pointed out in real time,” the specialist illustrates. This is an option that Ultrapharm can add at a later time.
Efficiency from all angles
When Ultrapharm acquired the M-TA oven, it had just been launched. Several aspects contributed to the decision to invest in this brand-new technology; among them, Simon McManus, a qualified baker with 36 years of experience and Ultrapharm’s general manager, highlights the overall oven installation time, and the service within the MECATHERM team. These doubled with characteristics of the oven itself that are important for Finsbury Food Group’s company: “The M-TA is an energy-
saving system and it works well with all our diverse product range,” he told us. Thanks to its program pattern, the oven can be efficiently set to meet the criteria of each product – it covers heating options for anything from pastries, which need lower temperatures as they contain more sugar and fat, to bread, which bakes at higher temperatures.
Numerous production lines are interfaced with the new system, from extruders, depositors, a mini pan line bread line and a smart line, proofer, coolers, and packing solutions. Operations using the M-TA are planned a week in advance at Ultrapharm’s facility, to maximize production efficiency –meaning the types of products going into the oven are scheduled according to their baking requirements. “We cluster rolls, pastries, and cakes together because they have a similar baking profile,” he illustrates, adding that, “The oven is good at what it does because we can make changes quickly: we can move within temperature intervals of 100°C in a matter of minutes.”
Unlike most ovens, which allow the heat to go out of the baking enclosure, this oven has a damper that prevents most of the heat from being expelled during program changes. This has been another element that greatly benefited production here, because the products require varied temperatures and frequent changes. “We normally bake at around 150-200°C, whereas wheat products use about 250°C and a short baking time. The ingredients going into each product will dictate how we manage baking,” he adds.
Every hour, Ultrapharm can get around 3,000-3,500 products through the oven; previously, this number would only be around 1,400, so they have doubled their efficiency in terms of production speed, and for a wide range of gluten-free specialties. “Our portfolio includes pastry, cakes, vegan SKUs, bread, rolls and baguettes; to date, our SKUs are over 60 on-site, with several new sweet types of pastries and healthier SKUs such as high-protein and low-calorie categories,” McManus details. Around 75% of the production belongs to breads, with rolls and pastries having a share of 10% each, and cakes representing 5% of manufacturing volumes. “Going forward, biscuits, cakes, and pastries with vegan, gluten-free SKUs will be focus areas,” he highlights as areas with potential (last year, Ultrapharm invested EUR500k on a smart line to make vegan products, including French baguettes, paves, burger buns, etc.).
There is room for expansion, too, market-wise and with the support of the existing technology. This site doesn’t at the moment serve the country market where it’s based, for example; only around 2% of production stays in Poland. The business operates across Europe, with key customers in Sweden, France, Holland, Romania, and the UK. To expand locally, Ultrapharm has begun adapting products for Polish consumers and is entering the market from the second quarter of the year. Further increases in capacity would also entail expanding the team. There are three teams currently running operations at the facility in eight-hour shifts, so another team could be added. The existing equipment is already able to ramp up production, with no changes in the line-up, as it’s currently running at about 45% capacity.
Increasing production to full capacity will also give a clearer, measurable picture of the energy savings, McManus explains: “When we run at full capacity, we could earn about 20-25% savings in gas and electricity.”
