French fries are very easy to eat – they are the perfect finger food. It’s difficult to have just one and in the US alone, over 4.5 billion pounds of French fries are consumed each year. Though they are easy and delicious to consume, they have their fair share of challenges to process on the way to your plate.
When a French fry is still raw and wet, surface tension tends to cause it to stick to the belting causing products to travel around the head pulley and then drop onto the floor. In the past, this was corrected by spraying water on the head pulley or attempting to blow the fries off the belt with an air jet. Water is ever more expensive and now considered a finite resource – so an alternative way of dealing with this stickiness is necessary across the vegetable industry.
Volta’s SuperDrive™ with ITO-50 texture allows the fries to easily drop off the belting. It eliminates the need for other obtrusive methods. The texture is easy to clean and features the benefits of all Volta food-grade materials.
Another challenge of processing French fries is that when they are off-loaded into the processing plant, significant amounts of dirt, sand, mud, vines, and rocks are mixed in loosely or adhere to the potatoes. These ‘products’ can cause very harsh damage to a conveyor like severe abrasion.
What’s more, when modular belts are used, the free fall of the potato during intake and washing can break belt materials. Plastic parts can then go into the potato, creating hazard points.
Volta Belting uses homogeneous food-grade materials, including transparent and translucent conform designs for funnels, chutes, pipes, and similar elements. The flexible material is ideal for forming and is used on potato intake chutes and other areas where a gentle transfer can prevent bruising. The belt material absorbs the impact of falling products, preventing waste and rejects.
Volta Belting has a solution for the potato and all its idiosyncrasies!
