Buono come il pane – as the Italians say: the bread determines the meal! We all know the Italian focaccia. Water, flour, olive oil, salt and sourdough form the basis of this authentic Mediterranean bread. But there is more to it than just putting these ingredients together, kneading and rising the dough are essential additions to achieve the optimal end result. Boboli Benelux from Bunschoten has been baking a wide range of Mediterranean bread since 1998. The production facility at the Kronkels employs 325 people full-time to supply 75 million loaves of bread and savory snacks annually to supermarkets and catering companies in northwestern Europe and the United States.
Boboli started its bread production at the Energieweg, where the production capacity quickly increased to 3200 products per hour. However, the product variety there was relatively small. After moving to the Ansjovisweg, a more spacious location with more machines and automated processes, production numbers increased to 7200 products with a greater variety. The automation of the oven supply, ventilation system, proofing system, dough transport, freezer and oven mainly consisted of stand-alone production processes and these processes were mainly PLC bus oriented.
At the Kronkels headquarters there are now 2 lines with 12,000 and 24,000 high quality products per hour respectively. The new focaccia line was created through a nice collaboration between Boboli Benelux and several external partners. To mention are BVT Bakery Service, Akker Electro for the automation, Verbrugge Koeltechniek for the refrigeration and JUMO Meet- en Regeltechniek for the climate control.
The focaccia line has a capacity of 24,000 products per hour.
The line starts with the dough transport via the dough pressure belt and the pattern former on the peeling boards. The boards travel via the elevator to the second floor to the testing cabinet. When the peeling boards come out of the proofing cabinet, the nibbling belt detaches the dough pieces from the peeling board. The empty peeling boards are returned to the pattern former by the brushing machine.
The dough pieces pass through the dough kneader to the butter spreader, cheese spreader and decoration spreader. The dough pieces then go into the furnace..
The control of the Focaccia line takes place from the control cabinet. An S7 1500 PLC possesses 288 digital inputs, 112 digital outputs and 4 analog outputs. The CPU of the PLC is connected to a switch and this switch brings all network connections together. The gateway DFE32B is connected to the switch via the PN2. This gateway handles the conversion of the network to S-bus. Via ten of these gateways, the entire control of 68 frequency and 4 servo controllers for all the motors is carried out. Via the three touchscreens 12" PN3, PN4 and PN5 the different product parameters of the Focaccia line can be set.
Via PN6, the proofing cabinet is controlled and there is also a connection to the climate control. The climate control consists of an air handling unit (AHU) that provides the correct temperature and humidity in the proofer via a control system.
The stacker is controlled by the PN7 and this ensures that the empty peelboards return to the pattern former via the brush machine. If there is no dough, the peelboards go into the buffer system
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