Fox’s Biscuits of Batley, West Yorkshire, is well known for its high quality biscuits.  An ABB UK standard drive has helped them to improve product quality, reduce wastage and increase their ability to develop new products.

The company was interested in investigating the potential for saving energy on its ten Baker Perkins dough mixers, each of which was driven by an 18.5 kW slip-ring motor. The idea was to use a standard ABB induction motor driven by an ABB standard drive and compare this against one of the slip-ring motor driven mixers.

Although the initial reason for the project was energy saving, it soon became clear that the drive gave several more important advantages. One of the major ones being the flexibility to run at different speeds. There are many other ingredients in biscuits, such as fruit. Previously, the mixers might over-mix, leading to staining where the fruit becomes a mush rather than remaining whole. The new ABB combination helped maintain a high quality product and avoided the situation where a whole 400 kg batch of dough could be wasted.

The ability of the drive to change the speed of the mixer also allowed the company to be more innovative, and experiment by using different speeds throughout the mix, depending on the recipe.  The greater torque of the new motor also led to higher reliability of the mixer. The drive was also the source of useful data such as load analysis, which saves process data such as current and torque values allowing Fox’s to assess production issues.

The mixers typically run 24/7, with a duty of around 10 minutes operating time every 30 minutes. In addition to the process quality improvements, the ABB standard drive reduced energy use by 30%, producing further savings on the already low running costs. They now plan to convert the remaining nine mixers.

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