June Newsletter
VOLUME 28 NO. 6
While Gem Equipment is best known for large french fry potato blanchers and fryers, this company manufactures other types of equipment for other segments of the food processing industry. Other segments served during the past year include appetizers, beverages, cookies, fruits, nuts, seafood and vegetables. All of these use conveyors. Over the years Gem has manufactured several types of belt conveyors, screw conveyors and vibrating conveyors. Any food processing plant that conveys solid product, packages, bottles or cases will probably have an application for belt conveyors. For this company, belt conveyors include two broad categories, positive drive and friction drive. Friction drive includes nitrile rubber belting, PVC belting, RMV belting and wire mesh belting. Positive drive includes wire mesh with side chains, segmented plastic belting and most recently, sprocket driven polyurethane belting. This belting has what amounts to gear teeth on the back side so it can be driven with sprockets. Even though Gem still manufactures a very small number of heavy duty vibrating conveyors, this company is not a big player in this product line. Twenty years ago, operating with finite resources, Gem made the decision to develop french fry fryers rather than upgrade vibrating conveyor design.
The Flodin rock trap is a recent addition to this company’s product line. For product, such as potatoes that sink, this unit also removes floating debris. Rock traps designed to remove floating debris have 2 discharge conveyors. Floating debris come out on the top conveyor, rocks out on the lower conveyor with the potatoes conveyed out in a stream of water that exits in the middle of the rock trap. Other equipment manufactured for handling raw product includes raw product holding bins, washers, pneumatic separators and tote dumpers. A tote dumper for soft fruit becomes a fairly elaborate system. To avoid bruising the fruit, the tote is under water when the product is removed. The product is then conveyed by water flow to an elevating conveyor.
Gem Equipment has always manufactured most types of steam and water blanchers. These machines have cooked many products including asparagus, bacon, beans, broccoli, corn, okra, pasta, rice, spinach, and as noted above potatoes. Auger, rotary and belt blanchers are included in the mix. Double draper water blanchers are probably the most flexible and most expensive. Both belts are wire mesh with side chains. In addition, the bottom draper has side plates and flights. The top draper travels through the blanch area just above the top of the flights and side plates, forming a series of closed boxes. Although this blancher is quite expensive, it is very effective for processing fragile high value products. Speaking of blanchers, Gem has 3 used Turbo-FloTM blanchers for sale. Two are 6 feet wide 2 fan models with 16 foot long blanch length. The third is 4 feet wide single fan model with 8 foot long blanch length. At this time 2 are available “as-is.” It is anticipated that the blanchers will be refurbished before being sold. They can be lengthened, if necessary, to meet processing requirements.