This is part of a series of Q&As with MPE Sales Engineers on what takeaways and trends they learned at trade shows.
Q: What was the most frequent topic that came up with Pack attendees?
A: What came up a lot in conversation was flour. MPE’s wheelhouse has always been coffee, and since we’ve been applying our precision engineering toward entire process systems for other applications the past 15 to 20 years, a lot of customers came to us this year asking: ‘Hey can you do flour? I’ve got a flour mix that’s segregating with my current setup. Can you intake, weigh, store, transport, blanch, grind and package my flour mixes and so forth without it sifting and segregating?’ The answer is yes, we can. We’ve done several blended flour systems like this one we did for Mondelez and another for a large flour producer.
Especially with keeping a system clean, attendees were impressed with the cleaning capabilities of the two Chain-Vey demo units we brought to the show. They were able to see that Chain-Vey offers a lot of flexibility in clean-in-place options that our competitors aren’t always able to accommodate. Whether it be with dry cleaning methods, non-water—like alcohol spray solutions—we can offer ingredient management systems built with entirely FDA-approved components.
Q: What were the topics that customers were most appreciative to learn?
A: We had a lot of first-time visitors at IBIE and Pack, and many showed a lot of interest in flour. My top 3 takeaways that attendees most often told me they were glad to find out are:
- The new Mega 8” Chain-Vey would be perfect for truck unloading doing up to 200 ft3/hr. This kind of throughput halves the time of unloading a truck compared to other conveyors, while keeping the ingredients protected from the outside air and elements.
- Chain-Vey won’t segregate blended flours, which is a lifesaver for ingredient management systems. Everything Andrew Huynh said resonates here.
- Some customers were worried about waterfalling of flours in tubular drag conveyors during high verticals. We were able to show with our demo unit and testimonials this is not an issue with Chain-Vey. This is something we’ll also be making a high quality presentation video of here at MPE for website visitors to see as well.
Bonus Video from the IBIE
At the IBIE 2019, Sale Engineer Alex Wolf introduced the MEGA 8″ Chain-Vey which proved popular among new attendees and existing customers. CulinaryTV’s Bill Rogers interviewed Wolf on the history and development of the MEGA 8.
