Background
Constant investment in R&D and innovation and the highest attention to food quality are the main reasons behind Turatti's ever-growing success in the food industry. The Italian company, based in Cavarzere, near Venice, designs and manufactures machinery and complete processing lines and invests 15 percent its sales income into R&D, while 82 percent of its machines go for export. In addition to its headquarter in Cavarzere, the company has established offices in Yorba Linda, California (US) and in Allonnes, France.
“We are a family-run company founded in 1869 with a long history of innovation in the agro-industrial field. Today we are able to offer a wide range of processing solutions for canned food, frozen and fresh products, fresh-cut and convenience food,” explains Alessandro Turatti, Sales Director of Turatti Srl and President of Turatti North America – representing the fifth-generation of Turatti family.
Turatti manufactures custom solutions for the food industry and works both for food service companies, which refurbish fast-food chain equipment, and for big multi-national end users.
“Our customers require maximum safety, stable working cycles and smart resource consumption in their processing lines,” Turatti elaborates. “Turatti's production is fully oriented to satisfy these requirements, thanks to our cooperation with the best hardware and software machine automation technologies providers.”
Challenge
Two years ago a big corporation in the fresh food market asked Turatti to realize a washing and treatment pilot plant for fresh salad. After the first master plan, the customer commissioned Turatti for eight other plants in three different key locations. The eight new Turatti plants started running between 2012 and 2013. “For this customer we designed and realized a patented continuous-flow washing and treatment system. This revolutionary system utilizes the proven closed pipe flume concept to transport water and fresh salad, which is mainly based on thermal shock (from 60 to 3°C). This closed flume features full submersion of the product, which means excellent washing and treatment process and minimizes microorganism growth,” Claudio Gaffarelli, Head of Automation and Software Department of Turatti, explains.
Turatti's customer needed to control water conditions (pH), micro-organism presence and temperature. At the same time, the customer demanded easier and more precise process regulation, to help ensure the best product quality. They needed to perform working speed cycles up to 5 tons/hour. “In order to help ensure product quality in the lines, we had to design a solution which could avoid any severe fluctuation or sudden variation of level, flow, pressure or temperature conditions. Even minimal temperature variations, in a range of 0.1 or 0.2°C, could irreparably damage the fresh salad in some steps of the treatment or washing process. Thus, the project required seamless integration of field instruments and valves, which should be managed directly by the automation and control platform,” Gaffarelli adds. When realizing the washing and treatment plants for fresh salad, Turatti selected the PlantPAx™ Process Automation System from Rockwell Automation.
