Smokin' good: clean compressed air for Texas BBQ Foods

Texas BBQ Foods is a family owned and operated company based in Inglewood in the Taranaki Region of New Zealand’s North Island. There, in a state-of-the-art facility, the team produce a range of Texas-inspired smoked beef brisket, pork belly, cheeses and butter along with rubs and sauces.

The family follows the traditional Texas BBQ style of preparing meat which has its beginnings in the European meat-smoking traditions originally brought to Texas by German and Czech settlers in the 19th century. Taking only the best NZ-grown beef and pork, a rub is first applied to the meat before it is smoked in one of the plant’s four large meat smokers using mesquite-chips for an authentic Texas BBQ flavour. Once the meat is cooked it goes straight into a blast chiller, before it is sliced, vacuum packed and chilled, ready to be despatched. The vacuum packing process is an important stage in ensuring the products retain their integrity, allowing consumers to enjoy the meats, cheeses and butters days or even weeks later.

In developing the manufacturing plant, it was clear that a reliable supply of compressed air would be critical to the operation.

“A critical factor in selecting a compressed air solution for us was to find one that would deliver a reliable supply of clean air,” said Ash Peters, Director of Texas BBQ Foods. “We also wanted it to be easy and low maintenance, quiet in operation and a nice tidy unit that would be simple to install.”

Compressed air would be required across the facility for various purposes including powering the thermoformer packing machine. This automated machine places the finished meats into trays before a vacuum seals the packets.

The company wanted to use local suppliers wherever possible. With a good reputation and also local to the company, Texas BBQ Foods therefore contacted local authorised Kaeser partner Pace Power & Air for a solution. After reviewing the requirements Pace Power & Air recommended and subsequently installed a Kaeser Aircenter 6 that would operate with a food-grade lubricant, along with two Kaeser F6 filters: one KE and one KA.

The Aircenter from Kaeser Compressors presents the ideal solution where a complete and compact turnkey system is required. Within one space-saving compact package the Aircenter includes a Kaeser rotary screw compressor, an energy-efficient refrigeration dryer and an air receiver.

The Aircenter has been designed to be user- and maintenance-friendly. It has excellent accessibility to all service points and in addition it includes a Sigma Control 2 controller for ease of system control and monitoring. With this internal controller, compressor performance can be precisely adjusted to match respective compressed air consumption for optimum efficiency.

To meet the air purity level required for food manufacture, two Kaeser filters were also installed. The Kaeser filter range uses modern deep-pleated filter media to remove particles and aerosols, while a highly effective carbon fibre mat traps oil vapours. Together with innovative flow dynamics, they deliver exceptional filtration efficiency with minimal pressure loss.

The compressed air system has now been in operation at Texas BBQ Foods for a couple of months. “It’s doing exactly what it’s supposed to! We are finding it to be reliable, nice and quiet in operation, user-friendly, requiring only minimal checks,” Peters said.