Sanitary, Stainless Conveyors Not the Same

In a true sanitary conveyor, every part can be reached with water, soap, or other cleaning agents and the design eliminates any chance of product collection and bacteria growth.

Understanding crucial design terminology and distinctions between two conveyor types can help save time, money, and headaches in plants.

Many factors drive food processors to upgrade their conveyor systems to a more sanitary platform. These include the Food Safety Modernization Act (FSMA), which takes a more proactive approach toward food safety by adding safeguards to try and prevent contamination or problems from occurring within the nation’s food supply in the first place. Regulatory compliance notwithstanding, companies simply can’t afford to have a contamination outbreak traced back to poor sanitary designs in their equipment. The risks to their reputation and their customers’ well being are too great.

As operators scrutinize ways to improve their food-processing practices and stay ahead of the FSMA, it’s quite common to decide to install new sanitary conveyors. It’s a sound decision, given that conveyors often come in direct contact with food, especially on the processing side. This equipment clearly needs to be built with strong sanitary attributes to eliminate any chance of contamination.

Not all “sanitary” conveyors are built the same, however. John Kuhnz, vice president of the Engineered Solutions Group at Hartland, WI-based Dorner Mfg Corp. (dorner.com), offered some insight on distinguishing characteristics.

Sanitary conveyors incorporate design features and capabilities that prevent food and water from accumulating. Among them, welds replace contamination-harboring fasteners where possible, and open-frame designs keep product from being trapped.

Is stainless steel truly sanitary?

A common misconception, according to Kuhnz, is that all stainless-steel conveyors are sanitary. When the FSMA was announced a few years ago, many companies purchased stainless-steel models thinking they would be achieving high levels of sanitary protection. Their purchases, though, may not have afforded truly sanitary solutions. In reality, there’s a big difference between “stainless steel” and “sanitary,” when it comes to conveyors.

Stainless steel is certainly the right material to use in applications that call for regular washings with light chemical cleaning agents. While a basic stainless-steel model can be washed throughout the day as needed (depending on how it’s built), that doesn’t necessarily mean the equipment is sanitized or cleaned. Sanitizing or cleaning a conveyor involves an entirely different process than simply washing it down. Much of that process depends on the way the system was initially designed.

What makes a truly sanitary conveyor?

The goal of sanitary conveyors is to, as much as possible, eliminate any chance of contamination. By their very nature, conveyor systems are an excellent source of contamination—particularly on the processing side where raw food and ingredients are moved. A sanitary conveyor works to eradicate the areas where contamination can develop, starting with the frame design.

A truly sanitary conveyor gives personnel complete and easy access to all areas of the system for cleaning. With the ability to reach every part of the conveyor with water, soap, or other cleaning agents, there’s no chance of product collecting and growing bacteria.

Such conveyors also remove harbor points, blind spots, and level surfaces within the frame structure, and replace them with rounded cross members to prevent food and water from accumulating. This design element is important because it doesn’t take long for components within a conveyor, such as the motor, to begin heating up collected food particles and speeding contamination. In addition, the overall frame openness means that any product that falls off the belt will land either in a catch pan below or on the floor; nothing gets trapped within the frame.

Another common hygienic feature of sanitary conveyors can be seen in their non-plate-on-plate construction. Frame sections in plate-on-plate designs are often bolted together with fasteners—notorious harbor points for contamination. This type of construction, in turn, prevents users from disassembling the equipment for cleaning. In a truly sanitary conveyor, fasteners are removed from the food zone and replaced with non-harbor-point welds, where necessary.

In a truly sanitary conveyor, personnel have complete and easy access to all areas of the system for cleaning.

Different levels of ‘sanitary’

When researching sanitary-conveyor platforms, Kuhnz said, it’s important to consider where in a plant the equipment is to be located. For example, in more downstream-oriented processing applications, i.e., where sealed and packaged food items are being moved, a conveyor might not need to be as hygienic as a system that carries raw food and ingredients.

Although downstream conveyors often accumulate corrugated dust from the cardboard packaging, washing or simply wiping them down constitutes adequate cleaning. These systems are still classified as sanitary designs, but the more robust sanitary platform isn’t typically required.     

The crux of the matter

Keep in mind that just because a conveyor is built of stainless steel doesn’t mean that it is engineered with proper hygienic attributes. This, according to Kuhnz, is really what is at the crux of the whole sanitary vs. stainless-steel comparison.

His point is that more thought, from an engineering standpoint, goes into the sanitary conveyor to make it a truly a hygienic platform. The sanitary aspects are considered upfront during the design phase to ensure these conveyors are more available and productive in food-processing facilities than systems that aren’t truly sanitary. For companies involved in these types of operations, understanding the different levels of “sanitary” in today’s conveyors will go a long way toward providing peace of mind.

For more information, email john.kuhnz@dorner.com, or visit dorner.com.

Select the Correct Sanitary Conveyor

According to John Kuhnz of Dorner Mfg Corp., Hartland, WI, well-built sanitary conveyors incorporate a variety of distinct hygienic design features and capabilities. To help ensure that an organization’s expectations are met, he reminds those researching various sanitary conveyor systems to consider these key points:

— Where will the conveyor be located and for what type of application will it be used, i.e., raw food/ingredients or sealed or packaged food items?

— How accessible will the conveyor be for purposes of taking it apart?

— Will disassembling the conveyor be easy, i.e., accomplished by one person with no tools?

— Would the conveyor’s design allow effective, required washing and sanitizing?