Rendering
Fragola Spa in the rendering industry
Fragola spa has been engaged in the rendering industry for 25 years, producing lines designed for grinding, sieving and cleaning meat and bone greaves for the production of excellent meat meal.
Sieving, separation and cleaning is entrusted to centrifugal separators with brushes, vibrating screens, and air flow systems – winnowers.
THE MFC SERIES HAMMER MILL
To meet the needs of the rendering market, Fragola has created a special line of mills: the MFC series hammer mills.
The grinding process for the production of meat meal poses many challenges, among which:
- The mechanical wear to which the machine is subjected and therefore the search for high-strength performing steels.
- The viscosity of the material which involves the careful study of the product flows and of the dirty air flows and filtering.
- The combustion hazard.
The rendering industry
The rendering industry deals with the collection and processing of animal by-products. Products not used in the meat, egg and milk industry are transformed into safe products such as meat meal, bone meal, blood meal, fish meal, animal fat.
The end uses of the products processed in the rendering industry are multiple: feed for farms, pet food, fish feed used in aquaculture, fertilisers and fuel in the energy sector.
THE RENDERING PROCESS
The rendering process begins with the collection of raw materials.
Once the material is transported to the plant, the first step is preliminary grinding, followed by insertion into the cooking chamber, either in a continuous flow or batch mode.
Cooking is generally achieved with steam (approximately 115°C to 145°C) typically for 40–90 minutes; the duration depends on the product and the type of processing.
As a result, complete bacterial inactivation occurs.
At this point, a pressing process separates the rendered fat and liquids into dedicated tanks from the solid proteins and bones.
The remaining solid portion consists of protein-rich, mineral-containing, and residual fat particles, which are further processed to remove remaining moisture and ground to produce the final meal.
The Rendering Sector: Data Insights
20 MILLION TONNES OF RENDERING PRODUCTS ARE PRODUCED EVERY YEAR IN EUROPE, LET’S FIND OUT THE DATA!
About 328 million heads of cattle, pigs, sheep and 6 billion heads in the poultry sector are slaughtered every year in Europe.
During slaughtering 34% of the mass of pigs, 42% of cattle and 25% of poultry is not used for human consumption and is therefore intended for the rendering industry.
This must be added to the 2.45 million tonnes of dead animals on the farms.
In total roughly 20 million tonnes of by-products are processed in the rendering industry, of which 5 million tonnes are considered high risk.
REGULATIONS
The regulations in the rendering industry are strict and classify each product into 3 categories.
From the 1st category which includes materials at risk, up to the 3rd category in which we find products suitable for human consumption at the time of slaughter, safe material with high nutritional values.
LET’S FIND OUT ABOUT THE END USES:
Everything else, depending on its classification, is transformed into fertilisers, fish feed, animal feed, pet food, and also used in the chemical industry as fat in place of palm oil, and partly also in edible fat in the confectionery and frying industry.