Strong sanitation and maintenance programs are essential to a commercial bakery. But with the current labor shortage, these teams are often understaffed, leading to critical errors such as product recalls, broken equipment and more. 

Today, however, many dividers are designed to help shorthanded bakers quickly clean their equipment and keep production humming.

Royal Kaak provides a cleaning trolley for its dividers.

“With that the heaviest parts of the dividing mechanism can be taken out of the machine for cleaning without physically lifting those parts, which always brings a risk of dropping them on the floor,” Luuk Hooijmaijers, sales manager, Royal Kaak, explained.

Easy access to the product path also greatly reduces sanitation times, noted John McIsaac, vice president of strategic business development at Reiser.

“We know that you must have access to the product path to truly clean a machine,” he said.

Ken Hagedorn, vice president, bakery sector, Handtmann, observed that many bakers have switched from traditional piston dividers to extrusion dividers in part due to the ease of washdown and cleaning between products, especially when deep cleans and removal of allergens are required. 

“Our machines are hygienically designed and built to meet the highest sanitation specifications whereas most of your standard bakery equipment isn’t designed or constructed to a USDA washdown spec,” he said.

Optimal divider performance is always achieved by closely following the manufacturer’s cleaning and maintenance instructions, said Jerry Murphy, vice president of sales, Gemini Bakery Equipment. This includes adequate cleaning intervals and periodic preventive maintenance inspections.

“Keeping an adequate supply of spare parts on hand and contracting for yearly inspections by a trained factory technician go a very long way to keeping equipment in its best operating condition,” he said.

WP Bakery Group USA offers two sets of removable components for its dividers, allowing for quick changeovers as one set can be cleaned while the other is installed. 

“On our bagel divider we have modular pockets for the pistons that can be removed and replaced,” said Nate McDermott, director of customer service and technical sales of WP Bakery Group USA. “It is a food grade plastic, which allows you to maintain a sharper edge on the piston pocket and results in better weight accuracy.”

Hagedorn noted skimping on maintenance and sanitation only diminishes quality and accuracy down the line.

“Bakers will run equipment until they destroy it, and they don’t realize that for the last leg of life of the part they’re probably giving product away,” he said.

This article is an excerpt from the December 2023 issue of Baking & Snack. To read the entire feature on Dividing, click here.