In order to realize the expansion plans of Farm Frites, a Dutch producer of pre-fried, frozen chips, the production line in Lommel, Belgium, for chips of the highest quality had to be renewed and expanded.

Except for a few process steps, the line has been completely rebuilt and expanded. For example, a new drying tunnel, in which fans circulate conditioned outdoor air over a long conveyor belt, has been added.

To save energy, the dryer uses heat recovered from the baking oven, and the temperature control works on the basis of humidity.  At the end of the production process, the chips are successively cooled and frozen.  Here, a mechanical sorting machine ensures that broken and deformed chips are removed. The final product is automatically transported to the cold store in various packaging.

New on the line is an installation to add 'coating' to the chips. With this, certain properties, such as color and taste, can be added, and the fries remain crispy for longer. The installation is in a bypass set-up, in which fries are submerged in a paste. Thanks to air knives, part of the coating can be recovered.

Heveco, the partner of Farm Frites, took care of the complete electrical engineering and automation of the project, including panel construction and software programming of the PLCs.  All machines, including the coating applicator, run on one central control.  An army of about 175 Siemens Sinamics G120 frequency converters ensures an efficient flow. Together with the two main PLCs and the HMIs, these are fully integrated in TIA Portal, which, among other things, ensured a particularly smooth commissioning.  In the technical room, Heveco installed ET 200SP I/O islands for the decentralized periphery. The safety programming is integrated in the Simatic S7-1500 PLCs.