Many donut producers today are dealing with a plethora of SKUs to cater to consumers and accommodate retailers’ requests for seasonal items and limited-time offers.
The challenge, especially for bakeries making yeast-raised donuts, becomes how to meet those demands for variety while driving operating efficiencies and maintaining a low cost per unit.
There are several approaches to fix this challenge. Bakers can opt for a highly versatile line to maximize their throughput while managing a diversified portfolio. They can also rely on multiple smaller lines to produce a wide variety of lower volume products, or they can mix and match both big and small lines.
“For bakeries with low changeover requirements, a high-volume line is typically more efficient, maximizing output with minimal labor,” observed Ty Sarajian, president, Axis Automation. “Conversely, bakeries with multiple daily changeovers benefit from modular lines that can quickly alternate between decorations, flavors and drizzles.”
For decorating donuts, he added, Axis Automation provides backup units for quick color, flavor or tooling changes of filling, topping and drizzling. Most components, he said, can be swapped out in five minutes or less.
“This level of flexibility ensures bakers can respond swiftly to demand without compromising productivity or consistency,” Sarajian said.
Nick Magistrelli, vice president of sales, Rademaker USA, pointed out that high-volume donut lines minimize changeover times while increasing yield and reducing waste. The disadvantage is sacrificing quality and minimizing the flexibility to produce a variety of SKUs daily.
He suggested one alternative is to automate the makeup and frying of yeast-raised donuts while relying on more manual filling, icing and decorating of products.
“This allows bakers to scale production without a proportional increase in costs,” he said.
Paul Molyneux, sales manager, Belshaw Adamatic Bakery Group, pointed out some of the bigger players are putting in almost purpose-built lines because their production runs are so long — sometimes cranking out the same product for days.
However, he also sees the trend toward mid-sized lines to handle several changeovers.
“If you are switching between cake and yeast production, you tend to see multiple, smaller lines,” he said. “That’s giving them the redundancy they may need if something goes wrong. It’s also giving them the flexibility to switch between products much more easily.”
That said, some high-volume production lines can be designed to create both cake and yeast-raised donuts. After running yeast-raised donuts, the conveyor can be popped out at the entrance of the fryer and a depositor placed in to then produce cake donuts, Molyneux explained.
Perhaps the best option for quickly growing bakeries may be a combination of both larger and smaller lines, suggested Doug Kozenski, process industry manager, Heat and Control.
“When relying on one high-speed or high-volume line, the biggest potential issue is that all production is dedicated to one line,” he said. “As long as production runs smoothly, everything is fine; however, any issues with the fryer, or any other equipment on the line, could jeopardize the entire production until the issue is resolved. Fortunately, current fryer systems are highly reliable, and with regular, basic preventative maintenance, donut fryers can be expected to have an extremely high level of uptime.”
He noted the obvious downside with multiple lines is the cost of investment and the space they require in the plant.
For versatility, Kozenski mentioned that Heat and Control builds donut fryers with adjustable rods on the main conveyor to allow for a rod/product pitch adjustment that’s appropriate to different product sizes.
“This allows for a very wide range of piece sizes while keeping production on a single fryer,” he said.
Moline Machinery recently relaunched its website to provide more detailed information on the two classes of yeast-raised donut lines involving a mid- and a high-volume system.
Typically, mid-sized lines can produce up to 18,000 donuts an hour while larger lines can make roughly 40,000 3-inch ring donuts, or 70,000 minis an hour.
“The difference is in the makeup,” Moline said. “Our mid-volume systems are compact with an auto-loading stamper. It’s a machine that cuts the donut, removes the trim, and then it cuts the hole from the middle and removes it before it finally loads them into the proofer with just one piece of tooling. That cutter rack can be changed from one product to another in less than a minute. The high-volume systems have a separate cutter, a separate hole-picker, a dedicated attachment for trim dough and a spreading conveyor for certain lanes. They also have a different proofer loading device.”
For cake donuts, Auto-Bake offers its FlexAgility technology, which can produce several formats of donuts on the same line with the agility to change between them quickly, noted Scott McCally, president of Auto-Bake Serpentine, a Middleby Bakery company.
“Auto-Bake customers maximize their investment by producing several products on the same line,” he said. “One line can make many products. This saves space, operational costs and overall investment risk.”
This article is an excerpt from the December 2024 issue of Baking & Snack. To read the entire feature on Donut Processing, click here.