Minor Dairy produces a variety of premium ice cream products for food service outlets across the Thai and international markets.  The firm owns Swensen’s, Thailand’s largest ice cream brand, serving consumers throughout Asia.

 

Minor Dairy was looking for a high capacity freezing system to increase ice cream production at its processing facility near to Bangkok.  The firm required an efficient in-line freezing system capable of achieving the long retention time needed to harden large containers of ice cream.

 

In conjunction with a local agent, Starfrost supplied Double Drum Helix Spiral Freezer for Minor Dairy with a processing capacity of 1,500 kg/hr.  The Spiral Freezer features a 620mm wide stainless steel mesh product conveyor belt and two rotating drums, each with 10 spiraling tiers. The compact, modular system is 16.75m in length, has a height of 6.1m and is 6.2m wide. 

 

The bespoke Double Drum Helix Spiral Freezer is designed to process ice cream in 6kg plastic and paper containers, at a rate of 25 cans every six minutes.  The product enters the freezer at a temperature of minus 4 degrees Celsius.  Each container of ice cream is then hardened to minus 25 degrees Celsius. Minor Dairy required an efficient, high capacity hardening system for large containers of ice cream. 

 

An ‘off the shelf’ in-line freezing system would simply not be capable of achieving the capacity and long retention time needed to harden large containers of ice cream.

 

Cold air is circulated across the spiral belt in a unique flow pattern across all product surfaces.  This is extremely efficient in extracting heat as rapidly as possible, without subjecting the product to excessive air speeds.