Carolina Foods designed its new facility in Pineville, NC, for precision. The honey bun line is designed for long production runs that turn out the highest-quality products every time. 

Ingredient handling is housed in its own room: the nervous system of the operation, said Dan Myers, chief executive officer. A Pfening bulk ingredient system consists of outdoor silos for flour and sugar and bulk liquid tanks. The silos are outfitted with dehumidifiers to prevent mold growth. Ingredient storage was sized so that the bakery doesn’t have to rely on daily flour deliveries in an effort to head off any future supply chain issues. 

Flour is sifted by Great Western Manufacturing orbital sifters and delivered into day-use tanks. From there the flour is automatically added to the scale hoppers over the mixers. Super sacks hold minor ingredients, which are blended in-house before being delivered pneumatically to the mixer. For a touch of quality control, the ingredient handling room includes a sugar mill so the bakery can make its own powdered sugar. Carolina Foods also blends and mixes its own donut frostings to not only control quality but also offer customization. 

Honey bun dough is mixed in two 1,600-lb Peerless mixers. After the dough is developed, it’s allowed to rest so that the yeast has time to activate. Once adequately rested, the dough travels via a Peerless dough handling system to the hopper above the Moline Machinery sheeting line. Dough is managed into a continuous sheet, which travels through a series of reducing rollers to the appropriate thickness. Trim dough is automatically sent back to the mixer by another overhead conveyor. The recipe program calls for a pre-determined amount of rework dough, which adds flavor to the finished product.  

Back on the sheeting line, cinnamon and sugar are applied to each lane of dough before they are rolled by torpedo rollers. The dough snakes are transferred to conveyors to enter the guillotine where the honey buns are cut to their correct thickness. Honey buns are transferred onto the proofer belt under the watchful eye of an operator. 

Honey buns exit the proofer and enter the Moline fryer. The fryer features continuous oil filtration through Oberlin filters to enable the fryer to run for extended periods. This not only extends the life of the oil, but it also keeps free fatty acids low. 

“That’s just another investment we made to create an environment where we can make the same quality product every day,” said Sonya Yalla, director of quality assurance and R&D.

A Rexfab integrated conveyor system carries honey buns and donuts throughout production. Freshly fried honey buns initially cool on an IJ White pre-cooler spiral to get to the correct temperature to hold a glaze. After traveling under the MG Newell waterfall glazer, the honey buns cool and dry on a taller IJ White spiral cooler.  

Once fully cooled, the honey buns enter the primary Schubert flow module, which includes a picking machine. A vision system measures the space between each honey bun as well as their sizes. The system not only stores the data for quality control, but it also informs the robotic arms the position of honey buns on the belt for picking. The module features four arms. If buns are too close together as they pass the first pair of picking arms, they are skipped over to be picked by the second set. The module is a counterflow system; once a honey bun is picked, it travels back and through the flow wrapper. The unit features four wrappers, so if one goes down, the other three can absorb the capacity.   

In addition to the vision system, wrapped product is checked by a Mettler Toledo metal detector and checkweigher and then heads back the opposite direction into the secondary Schubert unit to be packed into trays. A Loma checkweigher will also monitor tray weight, and any individual piece or tray that is out of spec will be rejected. 

The Schubert secondary packaging unit constructs the trays, and a robotic arm picks and places packaged pieces to fill each tray. Similar to the primary packaging unit, this unit’s 10 robotic arms are guided by three vision systems. The system was programmed with every format and size, including exact dimensions, that Carolina Foods will need. This thorough programming enables the system to achieve the level of efficiency and simplicity on display. Once trays are filled, they are sealed and sent to be palletized. 

Finished product is currently transferred to a consolidation warehouse for shipping, which is done through a freight broker, or customers pick up their orders. Eventually there will be a warehouse onsite at the new facility. 

The entire bakery runs 24 hours a day for six days a week. Production lines are cleaned as soon as they are shut down, and the bakery reserves that seventh day for sanitation and maintenance. 

Carolina Foods designed this first honey bun line specifically for long production runs, so it makes sense that it features a high level of automation. The second honey bun line will be designed for lower volume products. New donut production lines will be designed similarly. Having production lines dedicated to high-throughput or flexibility enables the entire operation to run as efficiently as possible while also being able to handle customers’ requests.

“We can then be strategic with what products run on which line with production scheduling,” said Stuart Smith, vice president of operations. “Our donut lines will have a similar strategy.” 

The donut line ready for installation featured a Topos Mondial integrated mixer that feeds into a Unifiller dough pump system. Myers explained that every donut line will be able to run frosted or tumbled donuts with one production line featuring the capability to do crunch toppings. 

“We have to have that flexibility, or we can’t serve our customers,” he said. “We want to be able to cater to our customers’ desire for LTOs.”

A Royal Houdijk packaging system with SPS flow wrappers will automate packaging and be able to accommodate different pack formations.

This article is an excerpt from the July 2024 issue of Baking & Snack. To read the entire feature on Carolina Foods, click here.