Pet food and fish feed sectors the target of new Bühler extruder

The multifunctional machine is targeted at the pet food and aqua feed industries.

Daniel Stoffner, product manager, Bühler, said the focus in the development of the extruder was hygienic design, with an emphasis on maximizing productivity in the pet food and fish feed industries, as well as helping to prevent recalls.

Salmonella contamination is a growing concern in the aqua feed industry, he stressed.

To ensure best accessibility and risk reduction of cross contamination during cleaning, he said the conditioner in the PolyOne has been moved away from above the extruder to the side.  

“Also, it is the only extruder on the market where you can take out the screw and clean the whole processing section, without disassembling the complete extruder. ​

“Downtime for maintenance and cleaning is drastically reduced.”​

Higher throughput​

PolyOne has a modular system to allow the Swiss group to adapt the extruder to customers’ specific needs such as higher capacity.

The company said the new feeder screw is also said to enable higher throughput due to enforced infeed and therefore, higher filling degree. This also results in stable running conditions and improved production security, it added.

In terms of fish feed, the new extruder is designed for use in the production of floating and sinking feeds, as well as micropellets.

“There are definitely key players in the aqua feed market who are interested in the equipment. Most of those that I have been talking to at the show are coming from the marine fish species, so slow sinking applications but some of them are also producing and shrimp feed,” ​said Stoffner.

More video reports, as part of our VICTAM 2019 innovation round-up, will follow every day over the next two weeks.