John Brooks Company recommends top crate-washing system for poultry customer

Bird crates always require a thorough cleaning.

One of the many customer success stories in John Brooks Company Limited’s history involved a customer that had been commissioned to provide a crate-washing system for a leading poultry and food-processing company. The John Brooks Company team created a solution with minimal fresh-water consumption, more efficient cleaning of crates in one pass (eliminating the need for manual pressure washing), and more crates washed per day.

Hygiene a top priority

The new system needed to do a thorough job of cleaning bird crates, which had layers of manure built up. This waste cooked during summer months and froze in winter, making them difficult to clean. Hygiene is a top priority in food processing, so clean creates are a must. The company’s tunnel wash system was not sufficient, since some waste remained on the crate bottoms after washing, so several passes or manual cleaning were often required – resulting in wasted time, expense, and water consumption.

The customer contacted John Brooks Company for a better option. The company used its expertise in spray-nozzle applications to tailor a solution to the customer’s needs. Application expert Ron Ferland worked closely with the customer to provide insights into different nozzles and the correlation between flow and pressure for impact. The team came to the worksite to test nozzles and calculate impacts, trying out various crate positions and settings.

Ferland recommended a package that used 110 “P”-style, high-impact nozzles with valves and filters for better washing performance, as well as five Goulds pumps, Pitanco precision gauges, and a basket strainer. In the new system, crates were inserted into the tunnel with the top open and moved through a dipping stage in which the crate bottoms were washed. The top was closed with the nozzles and the crate sides and tops cleaned. Finally, the system administered a final fresh-water rinse.

The new system met HACCP requirements by cleaning crates thoroughly; it also consumed less than one litre of water per crate and cleaned about 20,000 crates a day.

To learn more about this case study and others, visit the website.

For more information, contact John Brooks Company.

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