Marel’s Convenience Food Line

Marel’s 700 mm Convenience Food Line consists of the RevoPortioner and a selection of wet and dry coating equipment. A typical line would feature the RevoPortioner, Active Batter Applicator, Active Mixer and finally the RevoBreader.

Flexible change-overs

Such a convenience line can create a wide variety of delicious added value meat products. A major asset is its high flexibility, as the line configuration isn’t fixed. Innova Food Processing Software guides the operator during set-up and changeovers, which ensures easy line set-up and an easily reproducible process. It’s easy to have a particular set-up for e.g. home-style chicken wing coating (with RevoBreader’s drum option) and change the configuration after one or more production days, giving the RevoBreader another role and another position, e.g. flatbed coating for chicken schnitzels.

RevoPortioner with Helix

The production of convenience products all starts with the RevoPortioner, featuring the new Helix Drum. RevoPortioner performs an automated task that can hardly be done by human labor. It produces perfectly portioned products at low pressure while retaining the texture and structure of the raw material. Processors can create the widest possible range of natural looking, 3D convenience products, always with the same shape, weight and size and of uniform quality, exactly according to customers’ wishes. The patented Helix Drum will ensure low pressure forming with continuous filling. The pressure of the meat pump is more consistent, resulting in a constant flow of meat.

Laying the foundation

Marel’s Active Flour Applicator, Active Batter Applicator and Active Tempura Applicator are the ideal foundation for a flawless layer of crumb. Flouring is a common first dry coating step. The fine layer of flour that is applied to the mass serves as a binder to allow other coatings to adhere better. Subsequently, a layer of batter will ensure that breading adheres appropriately to the product. Marel’s Active Batter Applicator and Active Tempura provide an excellent distribution of batter, remove and reuse excess batter, and are suitable for a wide range of capacities. Both wet coating solutions have the option to create an active bottom bed, assuring that the product is directly placed in the batter when entering the machine. This results in a perfectly even coverage of both the top and the bottom of the poultry products.

RevoCrumb - the art of coating

The RevoCrumb produces perfectly coated products with optimum crumb distribution over all surfaces of the product. Thanks to an innovative crumb-management system, it’s possible to control the flow of coarse and fine crumbs to the top or bottom bed. The crumb-management system ensures optimum coverage that always meets the customers’ requirements.
The crumb structure remains intact during processing, as the RevoCrumb doesn’t grind or crush crumbs, which makes it particularly suitable for very vulnerable crumbs.

Dual mode RevoBreader

An alternative to the RevoCrumb is the RevoBreader, a flexible machine that offers a flatbed and drum mode, all in one enclosure. This dual-mode configurability is the ultimate solution for applying high-quality coating, both to home-style and flatbed coated products. Switching from one position to another is easy; it doesn’t require the removal of any machine parts and it takes less than 2 minutes.

In flatbed position, the RevoBreader guides products through a bottom bed of crumb, while covering the top layer of the product with a gently falling layer of crumb. This results in high quality, uniformly coated products. In drum position, a high pickup of crumb and optimum ‘home-style coverage of the product is guaranteed with high retention of crumb to the product during the subsequent frying and baking process. This is ideal for coating of bone-in products. In a QSR home-style production run, the drum of the RevoBreader completes the coating process. The result is a home-style crumb with a handmade look, a breading with a highly attractive appearance, perfectly suited for sale in QSR restaurants.

Production insight

For a centralized process control solution, the Marel’s new convenience line is backed by Innova Food Processing Software. By controlling and monitoring the recipes and production, Innova ensures that the end product aligns with the customers’ orders. The supplied real-time data for performance monitoring ensures better food quality and food safety.

Innova’s full traceability program provides an overview of the raw materials' journey through the processing plant. As a part of this, the traceability engine records every process step in the convenience line. Together with the Recipe Manager tool, it’s easy to track systematically what has been made, when, where and by whom.