Blue Conveyor Belts Improve Hygiene Standards
04 May 2006
Hygiene is the key issue in any food processing. However, the hygienic design of conveyer belts, which transport food is often too little considered. Blue conveyor belts meet advanced hygiene standards because they differ in the colour to most foodstuff they convey. They thus contribute to the safety of a production line.
Conveyor belts play in many food processes an important role because they tie everything together. If they unexpectedly breakdown the whole production line can come to a standstill. Downtimes mean costs, less output, order backlog and overtime. Conveyor belts convey not only goods from A to B. Food conveyor and processing belts strongly influence productivity and can support or weaken hygiene and product safety.
Blue coatings and materials offer new properties
Manufactures in the conveyor belting industry use different synthetic materials like Polyvinylchloride, Polyurethanes, Polyethylene, Polypropylene, Silicone etc.. Habasit offers a complete range of belts for the food industry, both coated fabric and plastic modular belts. Blue coatings and materials gained a higher share in bakery, biscuit, dairy, meat, fish and poultry processing plants lately because they support hygiene more than white coloured belts. Installation of blue belts lead to improvements in many applications.
Blue is a colour that rarely exists in foodstuff, thus such foreign particles can be easily detected in the product. Remaining food residues are more visible on blue conveyor belts, hence the entire processing line may be easily kept clean. The blue material does further not reflect light as much as smooth white surfaces. Thereby there is less interference with optoelectronic device. The visibility conditions for the staff are improved as well, enhancing their working conditions.
To provide additional hygiene, Habasit introduced several products to the existing range of blue TPU and Silicon coated fabric belts. Newly released to the market is a belt with blue Habilene coating, another solution within the Polyolefine coated Cleanline range, which was specifically developed to improve the release properties of sticky foodstuff. Furthermore there is blue HySAN, a highly oil and fat resistant PVC coating. And last but not least Habasit offers many blue products within the range of plastic modular belts (HabasitLINK®), consequently users can chose the best solution for the application.
