When honey from various suppliers and locations is delivered for processing, its moiture content must be monitored and controlled precisly to ensure standardisation of the end product. If specifications are not met, whole batches would need to be reprocessed or sold as an "out of spec" product, effecting profitability and customer confidance.
Under real time fast moving process conditions, the responsibility of company fortunes was burdened on operations staff to conduct time consuming and labour intensive practices of manually sampling processed honey utilising hand held or bench mounted refractometers, and if neccessary adjust process variables in the hope that the overall batch would be within required specification. The end result was generally poor end product uniformity resulting in a high degree of product reprocessing, wasted time and effort.
After process analysis, consultation and minor pipeline modifications, ACS supplied and installed a K-Patents in line sanitary refractometer together with sundary control and final activation equipment within the process. Product dependant characterising curve modifications to the refractometer were carried out to suit specific product conditions together with minor adjustments of control parameters, resulting in a real time moisture control better than 0.1% variation without operator intervention, relating to high end product uniformity, profitability and customer confidance.
