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If you own a food processing business, the chances are you’ll be dealing with food trays and plastic food crates on a daily basis. But what happens to them once the contents are emptied? They need to be washed! We take a look at the importance of crate washers in the food industry and how they can help your business meet hygiene standards, maintain the quality of your products and more.

How Do Food Industry Crate Washers Work?

A food industry crate washer uses a combination of water, detergent, and mechanical action to clean trays. Here’s a simple breakdown of how a typical machine operates:

1. Loading: Trays are loaded into the machine.
2. Pre-wash: Trays are rinsed to remove loose dirt and debris.
3. Main Wash: High pressure water jets and detergent thoroughly clean the trays.
4. Rinse: Trays are rinsed with clean water to remove any detergent residue.
5. Drying: Trays are dried using warm air or other drying methods.

The entire process is automated for consistent and reliable cleaning, helping your business save time and money.

Crate washers can be built to handle a variety of crates used in different stages of food processing and handling. Here are some common types of crates that can be washed:

At Unitech Washers, we know a thing or two about keeping working environments sterile and safe. It’s the core of our business. So if you need to manage how dirt enters and exits your food production areas – you’re in the right place. Without throwing too much information at you, we’ll explain the key benefits of boot washers and why we think they’re a great investment.

Top 5 Benefits of Boot Washers

1. Improved Hygiene

Let’s start with the obvious one first. Afterall, maintaining a high standard of hygiene is absolutely paramount in food processing facilities.

Boot washers provide an efficient, automated cleaning solution that helps remove dirt and grime that could be carried into the facility on workers’ footwear. Our washing systems use high pressure water jets and disinfectants to ensure that no unwanted germs make their way past your doors.

3. Protect Your Brand Reputation

So what are the consequences if a boot washer isn’t installed?

Above all, it can impact people’s health. Additionally, there could be serious legal repercussions for the business too.

A boot washing station will ensure that your facility keeps a strong barrier against these risks, safeguarding your products, your brand reputation, and ultimately, public health.

Manually cleaning parts is often tedious and time consuming. Here at Unitech, we’ve seen first hand how the shift from manual to automated washing processes can transform operations. Automatic parts washers are no different, helping to eliminate various contaminants including oil, grime, dirt, paint, and other residues with little to no supervision required.

We take a look at all of the benefits of automated washers and how they can help your business.

What Are the Different Types of Automated Parts Washers?

As the demand for precision cleaning grows, so does the variety of automated parts washers. Here’s a brief overview of the types of washing systems you might want to consider for your business:

Cabinet Parts Washers

Ideal for smaller parts, cabinet washers are compact and efficient, using high pressure jets to blast away dirt and grease.

Ultrasonic Parts Washers

Using high frequency sound waves, ultrasonic washers can clean intricate parts to a microscopic level, perfect for delicate or complex components.

Conveyorised Parts Washers

Designed for high volume cleaning, conveyorised washers move parts through different cleaning stages, offering a continuous cleaning solution.

Immersion Parts Washers

These washers submerge parts in a cleaning solution, using agitation, rotation, or ultrasonic waves to dislodge contaminants.

Aqueous Parts Washers

Using water based solutions, aqueous washers are an environmentally friendly option that can efficiently remove a wide range of substances.

Rotary Basket Parts Washer

Rotary basket washers use a spinning basket filled with cleaning agents to remove heavy contamination from components. Great for uniformly cleaning small to medium parts, spinning them through cleaning and rinse cycles.

Aerospace parts are often exposed to harsh environments, extreme temperatures, and various contaminants during usage. Keeping these parts clean and in pristine condition is crucial for the performance and safety of aircraft – helping to remove unwanted substances such as dirt, oil, lubricants and more. But how is the whole cleaning process carried out? We explore three common cleaning procedures below.

Solvent Cleaning

Solvent cleaning is a widely used technique in aerospace maintenance to help remove contaminants such as grease, oil, dirt, and debris from aerospace components.

How Does it Work? – Solvent cleaning uses specialised cleaning agents to dissolve and remove contaminants. The solvent evaporates, leaving the parts clean and residue-free.

Benefits of Solvent Cleaning

Solvent cleaning is particularly effective for parts with intricate designs or components where water-based cleaning methods may not be suitable. You’ll usually experience faster drying times compared to aqueous methods, helping to minimise downtime.

High Pressure Water Jetting

The aerospace industry uses high pressure water jetting to clean a range of aerospace parts. High-pressure water jetting is particularly effective for removing stubborn substances like rust or paint.

How Does it Work? – Pressurised water is expelled through a nozzle, creating a focused and powerful stream – used for blasting away contaminants.

Ultrasonic Cleaning

Ultrasonic cleaning is a highly efficient and gentle method employed in aerospace part maintenance.

How Does it Work? – Ultrasonic washers use high-frequency sound waves to create microscopic bubbles that agitate the cleaning solution. This agitation helps dislodge contaminants from the surface of aerospace parts, including small, intricately designed parts, as well as larger industrial components.

Benefits of Ultrasonic Cleaning

Ultrasonic cleaning is a safe and effective method for aerospace parts. It delicately cleans components, removing all contaminants without the need for harsh chemicals that can cause damage.

It’s an automated cleaning process which is designed to help save you money and time. Simply place the part in the cleaner, choose the appropriate cleaning cycle, and let the machine do its job. Depending on the part’s size, ultrasonic cleaning can be finished in as little as ten minutes.

Are you still manually washing pallets at your facility? It might be time to consider upgrading to an automatic pallet washer, a decision that can significantly improve cleanliness, efficiency, and overall hygiene for your operations.

The Importance of Pallet Washing

Maintaining a safe and hygienic supply chain is essential in industries that rely on pallets for shipping, storage, and handling goods. Pallets serve as the backbone of logistics, but they can also harbour dirt, debris, grime, germs, and bacteria that pose contamination risks to products and environments. Proper pallet washing can not only help extend the life of pallets, but it’s also key to preventing contamination, which is especially important in operations handling food and pharmaceuticals.

Benefits of Automatic Pallet Washing

Automatic pallet washing machines offer numerous benefits including:

High Volume Handling: Automatic pallet washers can efficiently handle large quantities of pallets, significantly increasing throughput.

Cost Savings: While the initial investment in an automatic pallet washer may seem significant, it pays off in the long run. Reduced labour costs, lower water and chemical consumption, and fewer rejected products all contribute to substantial cost savings over time.

Compliance with Regulations: Many industries have strict regulations regarding pallet hygiene. Automatic pallet washers ensure compliance with these regulations, reducing the risk of fines and product recalls due to contamination issues.

Eco Friendly: Automatic pallet washers are designed to be environmentally friendly. They use fewer resources, generate less wastewater, and consume fewer chemicals, helping your company reduce its environmental impact and promote sustainability.

Manual vs. Automatic Pallet Washing

We’re not here to completely discount the advantages of manual pallet washing. For a start, it can prove cost effective for smaller operations as it requires minimal investment. It’s also a much more economical solution if there are only ever a few pallets to be washed.

However the biggest drawback of manual pallet cleaning is that it’s incredibly time consuming and labour intensive. The effectiveness of a wash largely depends on your workers skills and diligence, which can lead to inconsistent cleaning.

So for those that require a consistent and high level of cleanliness, upgrading to an automatic pallet washing machine may be a better option.