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Plant-based cheese cutting Equipment

Cutting

Cheese is the most demanding food in the entire dairy family to emulate using non-animal and dairy free ingredients. The complex physical and taste profiles of animal-derived milk products make plant-based cheese manufacturing challenging to pull off. But the growing appetite for lactose-free and non dairy products is serving alternative platters of cheese.

Plant-based cheese

Some cake items you may wish to cut can feature substantial amounts of cream. But that cream could smear and squeeze out of a cake during the cutting process while generating a lot of waste. Proper cutting accuracy is necessary for producing quality cream-based cakes without causing the cream to spill or spread.

<h2>Precision and hygienic cutting of creamy cakes using ultrasonic vibrations</h2>
The transversal ultrasonic cutter from TT Italy uses vibrating blades that cut your cake through quickly and precisely, preventing it from any damage or imperfections.
The cutter uses ultrasonic waves at a higher frequency than other traditional waves. The vibrations produced by these waves will create a frictionless cutting surface. The design also prevents waste, as the cake material is trimmed safely and effectively.

Cake ultrasonic cutter

Textured vegetable proteins made from soy, wheat, and oats are extruded into tubes or rods before being cut to the desired size. When cutting these extruded TVP tubes in large quantities, a guillotine cutter is required to cut multiple extruded products simultaneously and continuously to produce a uniform size.


<h2>Cutting multiple extruded foods to a controlled size and in uniform lengths</h2>
The Guillotine, from Mattoc, is cutting equipment that can simultaneously cut multiple extruded food products such as textured vegetable protein into a controlled size. The unit is driven by a servomotor which is placed at the end of the extrusion line. A belt carries the extruded product under the blade to be cut in uniform lengths based on the feedback of the conveyor belt drive. Cutting lengths of the extruded products can be controlled from 5mm to 1m or longer. It has a cutting speed of up to 350 cuts per minute for a cutting length of 20mm. Longer lengths would require slower speeds. The system is available in 4 cutting widths (400, 800, 1200, and 1600mm) and is supplied with a stainless-steel static blade or ultrasonic cutting blades for sticky or fragile products.

Industrial guillotine machine for extruded foods

From laboratory scale to large volume food or cosmetic production, it pays to have all-around equipment that can effectively cut, mix, emulsify, and even heat your products. Whether producing chocolates, processed cheese or beauty creams, a robust system that is flexible enough to handle products from different industries simplifies production steps while increasing overall productivity without compromising quality.


<h2>All-in-one processing system with direct or indirect heating of products</h2>
The Stephan Universal Machine from ProXES is an all-in-one processing system that includes cutting, mixing, emulsifying, and heating functions for food and cosmetics applications. The system is available as a tabletop or floor-mounted unit with frequency-controlled knives and with or without direct steam injection. Direct steam injection allows quick heating of products, like processed cheese, up to 95⁰C or 125⁰C, depending on the model. Various models are available for laboratories, R&amp;D, and industrial scale production with maximum batch sizes of 2.5 liters up to 170 liters. Finished products are discharged through a discharge valve or by tilting the bowl up to 90 degrees for highly viscous products. Various specially shaped tools and high-speed knives ensure quick mixing and cutting of products, making them ideal for most product applications. The system is equipped with either a soft touch keyboard or a touch panel for easy operation with an option of data recording via a USB stick.

Complete cutting, mixing, emulsifying and heating system

With consumerism comes great responsibility. More and more are switching their diet towards vegan and vegetarian alternatives, varying from dairy to meat. As more plant-based meat technologies are being invented, the production is rising in popularity. Ever wondered which challenges come with that?

Plant-based meat

Although the first association with almond milk might be the modern plant-based lifestyle trend, it is dated even back to the Middle Ages when it was used as an alternative to cow milk during Catholic fasting. Once harvested, almonds undergo a series of treatments in almond milk manufacturing equipment, such as bleaching, peeling, and grinding, to get the delicious final product for breakfast and desserts.

Almond milk

Creamier, sweeter and versatile are the key adjectives when talking about cashew milk, especially compared to other plant-based milk. Additionally, it is rich in vitamins B and D, as well as essential minerals. Being a blend of cashew kernels and water, the cashew nut milk processing equipment includes a peeling and washing machine, a colloid mill, and a blending tank.

Cashew milk

Although invented in the 1990s by Rickard Öste, oat milk has only recently grown to be one of the most popular milk alternatives in coffee shops, and it owes it to its smooth mouthfeel and creamy texture. Extracted the plant materials from oats with water, this non-dairy milk is high in fibers, low in saturated fats, and eco-friendly. Oat milk processing equipment helps prepare raw materials, starting with harvest over kilning and making them into flakes or flour, and mixing the prepared materials with water and enzymes.

Oat milk

First mentioned on a stone slab of the Eastern Han dynasty in ancient China, soy milk has survived centuries and spread from Asia to Global consumption due to the rising popularity of plant-based alternatives. To produce soymilk, raw materials must be harvested, prepared, and blended with water and desired ingredients, such as flavors and vitamins, in soymilk processing equipment.

Soy milk

Making.com is a new online platform that helps makers find production technology quicker by grouping it around the products they make.

Menna was a man of many titles in ancient Egypt. He was officially a scribe, but his burial stones in Saqqara depict plows and sieves, sickles and baskets, angling lines, and nets. Effectively, he was Pharaoh’s food production manager.

As early as three millennia ago, technology was inextricably linked to food production. Farming, fishing, or hunting developed in conjunction with the tools and knowledge of the community. This formula remains the basis of the food industry today, perhaps even more so since the industrial era.

The connection is most strongly seen in the nascent plant-based foods market. Start-ups in this space are as much tech companies as food manufacturers. That reflection is from Floor Buitelaar, co-founder and managing partner of Bright Green Partners, a global consulting trailblazer in the alternative protein field.

“Established food companies don’t typically build in-house capability to develop manufacturing processes,” tells us Floor. “But new manufacturers in the plant-based industry have engineers and technologists within their ranks.”

Products such as dairy-free blue cheese or vegan chicken breast convert the properties of beans, nuts, and legumes into the sensory profiles we learned to identify with casein and meat. This transformation requires specialized process knowledge that is hardly necessary for traditional foods. Plant-based food makers are a different kettle of fish - process design is an intrinsic part of the product offering and a primary differentiator.

“Unlike conventional food producers, plant-based product brands must create textures, tastes, and mouthfeel that do not naturally occur in the main ingredients they’re working with,” explains Floor, reducing the emerging industry’s challenge to its core.

However, not all plant-based food companies approach this question the same way. Some brands focus on pushing the industry boundaries and invest their energy in innovating. Other companies seek to perfect a method and create the definitive plant-based product in the category. “This industry is not simply about foods, but about the strategy to develop them,” adds Floor. And manufacturers should be clear about their objectives from the start.

Innovators rethink a food category by modifying the production method or sourcing network. They experiment with alternative ingredients and work with novel materials. Meanwhile, perfectors want to refine the plant-based type and provide the ultimate experience to consumers.

Innovation-led manufacturers try different recipes and aim for first-mover status with original tastes, textures, and whole categories. Perfectors focus on one product at a time, and their strategy is to master the process with an established ingredient base. Controlling the process method becomes critical in this case.

In Floor’s experience with start-ups in this space, most companies are a mix of innovators and perfectors. Manufacturers typically experiment with formulations while working to improve a food category. They develop expertise with a definite process or ingredient combination but want to apply that knowledge to a broad range of products. “But the nuances are crucial because they determine the production plan,” she points out.

The fundamental question plant-based food manufacturers must answer is whether they need their own production facility. Floor says that it typically takes four years to get from zero to a running factory. Before making substantial capital investments, startups should know whether they want to grow into an innovation-based brand or a fully-fledged production company.

Although most manufacturers of plant-based foods have their own engineering teams to adapt technology and processes, engineering is only one part of a production facility. Innovators can still run R&amp;D projects and customize equipment. but they might be better off leaving large-volume production with co-manufacturers and focusing on product development.

In contrast, since perfectors hone in on their unique process, it makes sense for them to set up a facility. As Floor warns, products that demand plenty of specifications make external manufacturing more challenging.

This is not to say that manufacturing internally is a piece of cake. In fact, Bright Green Partners was founded to help companies navigate the complications of setting up a production facility. Building a new site and commissioning equipment are just two steps in Floor’s six-step process. The rest are ideation, feasibility, engineering, and, finally, the official operational phase.

“Many new manufacturers opt to retrofit disused plants instead of greenfield projects,” Floor reveals. Former food factories, especially in the cereal industry, can be converted relatively quickly and with smaller capex. There are trade-offs, though, and Floor says that not all sites may be adequate for the particular process of a plant-based product manufacturer.

Ultimately, retrofitting a facility or building one from scratch depends on the process technology involved in making the end product. Unlike Pharaoh’s production manager, plant-based food manufacturers don’t need to figure that out all by themselves. Instead, they can count on Floor and her team's advice to turn their ideas into market-ready products.

Innovator or perfector – what kind of plant-based food maker are you?

Food

Our food chain starts in the soil, growing crops and livestock. But between the fields and the stores, there is a line of industrial food processing equipment. Processes may be as minimalistic as cleaning fruit and as complex as homogenizing milk alternatives made from pressed legumes. In each case, processing technology is an important link in the food production chain.

With the right processing machines, almonds, cashews, pine nuts, hemp, coconut, oat and soy can be processed into healthy plant-based milk. To produce it, grind the raw materials, screen, soak and mix them till you obtain a milky white liquid.

Plant-based milk

ProXES machines and process lines are used to produce and process liquid and semi-liquid foods, cosmetics, and pharmaceutical products. ProXES together with its clients co-creates first ideas, develops tailor-made processing concepts and accompanies them until go to market.

New recipes are often created on kitchen counters. This is also true for innovative vegan specialties: They frequently go back to unique recipes developed by a single cook or kitchen team.

But translating a small-scale recipe, developed in a food lab environment, into an industrial product without altering the formula is a challenge. A manufacturing plant introduces a whole set of variables absent in kitchen-counter production.



<strong>Letting the processing experts chew on it</strong>

This is when Jens Thiele and his technology experts at ProXES come in. They help producers chart new processing terrain by designing commercial-scale manufacturing lines that keep the original recipe intact.

In the case of an artisanal producer of vegan cheese, the engineers designed custom solutions for milling the raw material, such as cashews or almonds, into fine particles. This approach gave their customer greater control over the base structure, enabling them to create the exact textures they envisioned.

“We determined the ideal particle size for the customer’s specific product type – down to a minimum of 30-40 microns,” explains Thiele. Anything smaller produces a clumpy mouthfeel, while a coarser grind leaves a gritty sensation.

<strong>Playing with water to define texture</strong>

But food texture is not dictated by particle size alone. Moisture content is another critical factor. Water regulates particle interaction: whether they can hold together and what pressure breaks them off.

Moisture levels, though, vary per material. Distinctions exist even between the same class of ingredients. For instance, caution is advised when producers use a combination of drupes like cashews and almonds for bases. “The oily almond requires different moisture treatment from the dry cashew,” the processing specialist at ProXES points out. “Almonds can be ground into very fine pastes if the nuts are dry enough. Cashews, on the other hand, must be processed with water as they have a lower oil content.”

<strong>Expertise in ingredients and processing</strong>

ProXES combined expert knowledge of food and processing technology, to help the manufacturer grow from lab to industrial scale, co-creating  new categories of plant-based specialties along the way. The vegan cheese producer adapted the manufacturing process to obtain distinct creaminess, stretchability and bite textures.

But the true recipe for success is the delicious synergy between the food companies and the processing experts. It can transform even homemade recipes into a marketable range of plant-based foods.

From the kitchen counter to industrial production: How to master texturing of vegan specialties

Drying meat was the prevalent method of conserving meat cuts when food could not be chilled. But dried meat products developed into delicacies and remained a culinary mainstay long after the functional need for preservation was answered with refrigeration. The ancient techniques have been replaced by dried meat processing equipment, but the time-honored recipes remain unchanged.

Dried meat

In Greek mythology, the people of ancient Attica chose Athena as their patron after the goddess gifted them the first olive tree ever.

The Athenians quickly discovered the multiple uses of the oily berry. But olives held more secrets yet. After years of research, <a href="https://polyhealth.gr/en/">PolyHealth</a> developed a way to extract molecules from the fruit and turn them into natural preservatives for foods.


<a href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/effie-lada-8b2099182/">Effie Lada</a> gave us a primer on the company’s ingenious method at the Free From Fair.

The result is a biological substitute for synthetic preservatives, ideal for delicate foods such as cured meats or plant-based spreads.

The flagship product, Medoliva, prevents oxidation and microbial growth without altering the natural flavors of products.

Thank you, PolyHealth, for this ground-breaking innovation. And thank you, Athena, for planting the first olive tree.

#Changemaker: A divine alternative to synthetic preservatives

Edible oils are fats that you can extract from various plants and animal tissues. The most popular sources are olives and sunflowers. You can use them for different cooking techniques, such as frying, baking, and other methods. Manufacturers are now finding ways to extract oils with a higher natural fat content efficiently using edible oil extraction machines.

Edible Oil

Essential oils are known as the liquid gems of nature. The sweet-smelling essences impact not just our senses but also our biochemical and cellular make-up. Besides aromatherapy, the products of an essential oil extraction system found applications in pharmaceuticals and foods.

Essential oil

Ancient civilizations discovered that plant extracts were useful for the treatment of pathologies. The origin of plant extraction cannot be specifically verified, but we can infer that the earliest attempts at plant extraction were more intuitive than scientific. Today, the extraction of compounds is a precise process with plant extraction systems complimenting traditional knowledge.

Plant extracts

Caboc? Nope. Crowdie? Nope. Lanark Blue? Nope. Bonchester cheese? Nope. Oh, wait… Did we say Scottish cheese?

We meant the Scottish Sheese!



From the beautiful Isle of Bute in Scotland, <a href="https://www.buteisland.com/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Bute Island Foods</a> was the first company in the UK to produce vegan cheese alternative Sheese in 1988. The company’s first vegan cheese was a cheddar style soya-based cheese alternative.

Made with coconut oil and without hydrogenated fat or palm oil, Sheese products are gluten and lactose-free.

Winning is hard work and determination, and that’s why, with over 30 years of experience, the company received more awards than you can imagine. One of the latest examples was the victory of Smoked German Style as the Best Vegan Cheese 2019.

Over the years, the company increased its range of Sheese blocks, Creamy Sheese, Grated Sheese, and Sheese slices with different formats and flavors.

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#Changemaker: From Scotland, the award-winning vegan cheese that is taking the market by storm

Find production technology for Plant-based cheese cutting, and connect directly with leading machine manufacturers worldwide

Plant-based cheese cutting Equipment

Which plant-based cheese cutting equipment do you need?

Cake ultrasonic cutter

Industrial guillotine machine for extruded foods

Complete cutting, mixing, emulsifying and heating system

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