The close alliance between the Haas Group and Bühler — and their combined expertise covering comprehensive systems for the bakery industry — will be on full display at iba. Haas and Bühler will be demonstrating for the first time how they’re shaping the new world of baked foods together.

The partners will be using chocolate-coated cookies to showcase the entire joint process chain, for which some of the central equipment will be on display. The process presentation and exhibits will be supplemented by the “Inno Lab,” where food technologists and chocolatiers will be creating various sweet and savory treats to try, as well as meeting customers with ideas for new products.

Bühler also is showcasing its ContiMix dough extruder, combining the mixing and kneading process. The double-shaft extruder was designed for producing consistent doughs for laminated products like puff pastry sheets, as well as for flat or shaped products. Various configuration options allow a rapid, recipe-based adjustment to the desired dough specifications.

www.buhlergroup.com

More than 50 years ago, Ashworth Bros. invented the first spiral conveyor and today remains the world’s largest manufacturer of conveyor belting for the food processing industry. The company brings its sense of history and innovation to this year’s iba.

At its booth, Ashworth will feature the latest PosiDrive Spiral System, which incorporates a unique cage design with cage bars that engage the inside belt edge, making it an ideal solution for challenging applications such as high tension, heavy loads, greasy products and product movement. The single speed control simplifies system operation and allows for the fine-tuning product dwell time. The system is a possible retrofit solution for existing spirals.

www.ashworth.com

Fritsch will be showcasing innovations and developments relevant to all its customer groups, including handicraft bakers and industrial producers to companies looking for system integrations. The company also will introduce its portfolio of Intelligent Services, a development meant to further help its customers increase the availability of their lines and facilitate communication with Fritsch customer service.

The iba booth concept represents the company’s philosophy that passion for dough and technology is what drives the Fritsch mission. Attendees should look for the Fritsch & Friends event, an evening to celebrate partnerships and the success they’ve all achieved together.

Several innovations will be launched with the focus on presenting notable progress in Fritsch SoftProcessing Technology. One of the highlights will be the new Soft Dough Sheeter (SDS), specifically designed for the handling of very soft doughs. The SDS was designed to create consistent dough compression and gentle dough handling. It works for doughs with a hydration rate up to 90% and creates a soft dough sheet with weight accuracy. The system produces Mediterranean and artisan breads and rolls, along with other popular products.

www.fritsch-group.com

Intralox invites all iba attendees to its booth to see the latest conveyance solutions in the bakery industry, including the company’s DirectDrive System (DDS) and ThermoDrive technology. Throughout the show, Intralox bakery experts will be hosting interactive presentations and daily lunches, and everything is open to all iba attendees.

Highlighted at the booth will be the DirectDrive Stacker, which is an extension of the Intralox DDS. It is a lightweight modular plastic solution that combines the hygienic and space-saving benefits of stackers with the unique, simplified operating system advantages of the DDS. The open side plates on this design provide improved horizontal air flow and the all-plastic construction prevents product contamination from metal wear debris.

Other benefits include a hygienic design that allows the stacker to be cleaned easily, efficiently and thoroughly. The horizontal airflow improves dwell-time efficiency. The stacker’s all-plastic construction also eliminates the chance of metal contamination and the need for lubrication. It also reduces product marking and product loss due to adhesion by up to 80%.

www.intralox.com

Visitors at the IPCO booth will be able to check out the company’s conveyor models for learning how the IPCO-belt group can help develop their own bake oven line. They also will learn how to get engineering and design support. Additionally, a food-grade stainless steel model will be running to show other opportunities available from IPCO.

IPCO is a manufacturer of carbon-steel bake oven belts, supplying OEMs and end users around the world. Previously operating as Sandvik Process Systems, IPCO is now an independent company within the Wallenberg group, with 600 employees and more than 35 sales and service offices. The company produces belts in widths from 800 mm to 3,500 mm. The use of wide belts enables significant improvements in capacity without having to invest in factory extensions or new facilities.

IPCO steel bake oven belts are available in solid or perforated form that are suitable for products as diverse as bread, biscuits, brownies, crackers, energy bars, pastries, sponges, all-butter cookies and pizza bases. This versatility allows manufacturers to broaden product ranges and expand into new markets.

The company also will show how it can provide engineering support and conveyor components.

www.ipco.com

Kaak Group is presenting The Smart Baking Experience at its booth, where experts will showcase how to achieve better baking results with lower costs and smarter production.

The company also will highlight how, for more than 100 years, it has been standing at the cradle of bakery automation. Through displays around the booth, the company also will demonstrate its digital tools to control the heartbeat of bakery businesses: the baked foods. There will be displays to show how Kaak Group can help bakers produce artisan bread, baguettes, cake, ciabatta, freestanding bread, pizza, pastry, rolls and buns, toast and tin bread, as well as how to manage multi-product lines.

www.kaakgroup.com

Koenig will present machines and lines at iba that combine the power of the four elements — water, air, earth and fire — to produce the perfect bread.

One of the new Koenig developments to be presented at iba is the Combiline plus, a completely revised version of the machine for even easier cleaning, maintenance and access to all modules. Combiline plus increases capacity with an output of 11,880 pieces in a 6-row operation. With the Combiline plus, bakeries can produce dinner rolls, sub rolls, hoagies, hamburger and hot dog buns, and stamped rolls, such as Kaiser. An entirely new user interface simplifies operation for daily production but also for changes in programs and service activities. The Combiline plus still features modular design based on the requested products and optimal price-performance ratio.

Additionally, Koenig will highlight its dough sheeting line for artisan bakeries that produce small- and large-pore doughs. And finally, the booth will feature the Menes-H industrial dough sheeting line with new universal dough sheet former adaptable for a wide variety of doughs.

www.koenig-rex.com

Mecatherm’s vision is to make industrial baking simpler through new product releases at iba. The company will reveal a new oven, which it said is flexible, precise and smart and is specifically designed to help bakers meet more diversified demand and an increasingly versatile consumer.

The oven offers the opportunity to use just one piece of equipment to bake several different products from soft to crusty bread to pastry. A tailor-made management of the baking curve on an intuitive interface fosters quality and uniformity of the products. The oven was created to match manufacturers’ need to reduce costs. And the design of the equipment itself has been crafted to facilitate easy maintenance while also helping with energy saving.

Visitors to the Mecatherm booth will be able to attend live ­demos every day.

www.mecatherm.fr

The Packaging Progressions booth will welcome attendees looking for high-speed interleavers, underleavers and stackers.

On display will be the new ProLeaver 26300 and ProSta Shuttle Stacker. This is a completely automatic solution to interleave, count and stack dough sheets with no operator required. The system handles large and small sheets single lanes up to five with speeds up to 300 sheets per minute, per lane, and a stack height of up to 2 in. The ProStax Shuttle handles long and short portions on the same stacker as well as the ability to stack portions without full paper coverage or with no paper.

www.pacproinc.com

Rademaker will focus on innovation for the smaller wholesale baker at this year’s iba. The booth will feature industrial, yet smaller volume production lines for production of croissant, Danish and artisan bread products along with innovations from the industrial Crusto Artisan Bread Line.

Various worldwide market trends require more flexible production solutions at a lower capacity without sacrificing industrial design, according to the company. So, it is presenting midrange bakery machines that have a dough capacity of 500 to 3,000 lbs per hour but will maintain the industrial integrity customers expect.

Hygiene, efficiency, flexibility and product quality were the focal points during the equipment’s development. The Rademaker midrange solutions feature hygienic design and sanitation. Best-in-class machine uptime in this capacity range is realized focusing on ease of maintenance, product changeover, and high level of reliability. Product quality is ensured due to the lowest dough stress processes, resulting in the highest quality bread and pastry products.

Information and opportunities in systems integration and virtual reality training will be on display as well. Rademaker also invites all attendees to stop by and enjoy a meal or cup of coffee.

www.rademaker.com

True to the motto “Dough-how & more,” Rondo will present new technology and processes for producing premium bakery products in the areas of pastries, croissants, pizza, and particularly bread and rolls.

The Swiss manufacturer of dough processing machines and systems will be exhibiting on more than 10,000 square feet many innovations and enhancements for artisanal and automated processes as well as for industrial production. One highlight at Rondo’s booth is the new Rondo ARTISANA, an industrial line for all types of cut, long-moulded and round-moulded artisanal bread and rolls.

The ARTISANA Bread Line is an industrial line to produce high-quality artisan bread. It combines high capacity and flexibility with hygienic design. It allows the production of round-moulded, long-moulded and cut artisan bread and rolls made of dough with high hydration and resting time. The unique multi-phase rounding process of the RONDObot allows, for the first time, bakers to round-mould soft dough in a smooth and gentle way. In conjunction with RONDOnet, the industry 4.0 application from Rondo, ARTISANA knows exactly how many products it produces, when it needs to be maintained and, in the future, whether the result of the operation meets the programmed requirements.

www.rondo-online.com

Shick Esteve will showcase the latest in ingredient automation solutions and process design at iba. The company will demonstrate its expertise in automation of bulk, minor/micro, liquid ingredients and process design through various interactive displays. Shick Esteve also will highlight its Internet of Things platform that includes data acquisition, recipe/batch management and traceability, called Clarity by Shick Esteve.

Shick Esteve focuses on giving customers greater access to data, so it built Clarity by Shick Esteve to consolidate and bring customers’ data, reports, intelligence, and overall view of equipment in a single pane of glass. The company uses a best-in-class device to gather data from various sources and send it up to the cloud, in addition to storing the data on site. This allows secure remote access to the site. The platform can deliver more than 100 million data points per day and funnel those, when appropriate, to the cloud for analysis. Additional modules will be available to see order history, tracking information and cross reference sensor data for historical and future orders.

www.shickesteve.com

Topos Mondial will exhibit five of its most popular mixers, along with one of its recently improved dough chunkers for use above a makeup line.

The company is showcasing the latest Model T-300OF Super Sanitary, all S/S, open frame removable bowl spiral dough mixer as well as the latest upgrades and sanitary improvements on the Model T-750 vertical double planetary mixer.

The new open-frame mixer is designed from the ground up to be prepared for the most stringent sanitation protocols. The design achieves high rigidity and durability, while safely covering the pinch points that otherwise arise between the moving and the stationary frame in these designs. The engineering placed emphasis on eliminating various pockets and hidden hard-to-clean spaces found in many spiral mixers. The mixer driveline uses a heavy-­duty direct-drive gearmotor, which eliminates moving parts such as belts, tensioners and pulleys. This direct-drive architecture eliminates the need for numerous safety guards and switches. Booth visitors will see how having fewer intricate surfaces, bolts and interfaces, in turn, makes the task of thoroughly cleaning the mixer substantially easier.

www.toposmondial.com

The Unifiller Systems booth will highlight the multi-piston depositor. Engineers and staff will be on hand to welcome attendees and provide an immersive experience with Unifiller equipment. The company will be hosting live demos all week, and visitors are invited to schedule one-on-one meetings with equipment experts to discuss automated solutions.

With speeds of up to 120 cycles a minute, Unifiller’s MultiStation depositor is a compact solution for fast, precise multi-piston depositing. The company will demonstrate how the depositor can deposit stiff batters, macarons, chunky fillings, egg custards, single-serve desserts, mousse cups and much more using servo-driven technology.

The machine also features a computer-controlled servo drive and accurate individual portion control through each nozzle. It is gentle on delicate products with chunks or inclusions and can spread and fill stiff, heavy products. It also features a built-in pan sensor and PLC controls, and the choice of six or eight nozzles and three product cylinders.

www.unifiller.com

Virtual reality (VR) is giving iba attendees an entirely new perspective. VMI will host a VR experience that will allow visitors to discover its latest full-size innovations for the bakery industry and see them in a whole new way.

VMI will present its new robotic mixing system with an overhead shuttle for the automated transport of the bowls. The system can be equipped with one or more mixers. It facilitates floor cleaning and allows flexibility without operator intervention in sponge-and-dough processes, including fermentation, resting and proofing times, or the addition of scrap dough.

These mixing systems have been designed for high throughput, so bakers need only schedule production plans and can be assured that their recipes will run automatically with great consistency. Because there is less need for monitoring from operators, bakers can increase profitability.

The ULTIMIX planetary mixer for snack, cake and pastry products also will be on display at the VMI booth, as will the latest mixer KNEADSTER, equipped with two tools especially shaped for snack food products.

www.vmimixing.com

Experience the latest technology in bread, roll, donut frying, bagel and pretzel production at the WP Bakery Group booth. Visitors will enjoy live demos and a full-service restaurant to rest, recharge and learn more about how WP is helping bakers grow their business.

The dough dividing-and-moulding machine, Soft Star CTi, which produces particularly efficient dough balls of high quality and weight accuracy, will be highlighter in the booth. This technology is optimally adapted for processing doughs with extremely high dough absorption and dough rest. The separation of the dough processing area and the drive area, as well as the modular design of the machine, makes maintenance of the machine easy.

WP will show visitors how good ergonomics, optimal accessibility, easy-to-exchange interchange parts and a graphical user interface complete the profile of the SoftStar CTi. The hygienic design provides good accessibility to all dough contacting components. As such, dough residues can be removed quickly and completely.

Using long-lasting drives along with its robust design, the Soft Star CTi is specifically designed for use in multi-shift operations.

www.wpbakerygroupusa.com