The deep clean: Baker Perkins upgrades Tweedy dough mixer to slash clean time in half

The company exhibited the hygienic redesign at bakery trade fair iba in Munich last month.

‘Five years ago it was fine, now you’ve got to do more’​

Baker Perkins’ previous version of the Tweedy mixer took around seven hours to thoroughly clean.

Keith Graham, marketing manager at Bakery Perkins, told BakeryandSnacks: “"We've probably cut it down by half. But it's about being able to do a thorough clean in the time that's available. You can do thorough clean quicker and you can do the intermediate cleans more thoroughly."​

He said that the previous version was taking far longer to clean due to hanging components such as valves on the mixer.

"These bread plants run 24 hours a day, five and half or six days a week and there just wasn’t time to do a proper clean,” ​the marketing manager said.

“Hygiene standards are improving so five years ago it was fine, now you've got to do more,” ​he continued.

Hygienic couplings​

Baker Perkins has introduced hygienic couplings on the ingredients platform of the machine, which has also moved closer to the bowl for easier access.

"If you want to take a pipe apart you don’t need spanners, it's just thumb nuts. It's the kind of technology that's used in the dairy industry,” ​said Graham.

He said bakers hadn’t previously deemed this technology necessary as it was assumed any pathogens would be killed by the temperate in baking ovens.

"Now they have to be careful about allergens in particular because allergens aren’t neutralized by going into the oven,” ​said Graham.

Bakers’ retail customers are also calling for a cleaner environment and questioning how bakers can guarantee contaminants are get killed in the oven, he added.

"If you went into a restaurant and looked in the kitchen, you would expect that kitchen to be pretty clean and tidy and it's no good the chef telling you 'No, it will be alright once we've cooked it!'" ​Graham said.

Mixer cleaning​

Baker Perkins has made exposed surfaces visible and sloped to help prevent flour dust from accumulating. In the mixer, the supplier has also introduced a wash-and-place system to replace manual cleaning.

"We've got a device that fits over the beater, we connect a high pressure hose...we close the mixer bowl and then this thing spins around and cleans the bowl,” ​said Graham.

Bakers can also use a shorter cycle by putting into the mixer bowl, spinning it around and then dumping the water.

“That gets rid of most of the build-up of debris, but if you want to get it properly clean then you have to fit this [the high pressure hose]," ​said Graham.

Retrofitting?​

Graham said it was unlikely existing Tweedy mixer customers would buy an entirely new machine purely for the hygienic upgrade, but he said Baker Perkins would assess whether it could retrofit the design on older machines. But he added: “We haven’t had the enquiry yet and we haven’t looked at the engineering yet.”​

Baker Perkins is currently installing the first redesigned Tweedy mixer in New Zealand.

The mixers have a capacity of up to 5,400 kg per hour.