Food and Beverage Industry Case Study: Moy Park Poultry Meats, Dungannon Site, Northern Ireland

“Moisture would cause the valves to stick, we have had no issues with this since installing Expel. Very impressed.”

Oliver Loughram – Engineering Co-ordinator – Moy Park

About the customer

Moy Park is one of the UK’s top 15 food companies, Northern Ireland’s largest private sector business and one of Europe’s leading poultry producers.

Moy Park supply branded and own label chicken products to leading retailers and foodservice providers throughout the UK, Ireland and Europe and are the industry leading manufacturer of organic, free-range and higher welfare chicken.

Although best known for fresh, locally sourced poultry, they also produce beef products, vegetarian products and desserts.

Project Background

At the notably large Dungannon site in Northern Ireland there is a lot of critical pneumatic equipment requiring bone dry air. For example, the robotic packing machines on the site are extremely sensitive to moisture. When exposed to even small amounts of moisture, it was causing parts to stick together, meaning timing was off and a loss of product was produced. Overall, this was leaving site efficiency and productivity in need of improvement. The solution was to ensure that the compressed air reaching these machines is continually free of moisture and solid particulates, else this can result in expensive component replacement and a lot of unnecessary production downtime.

However, Engineering Manager Neville Holland wanted to solve these issues by implementing a permanent solution to boost productivity at the site and ensure pneumatic equipment is adequately protected against damaging liquids.

“I like that the Expel has no replacement element costs”

Neville Holland – Group Engineering Manager – Moy Park

Why did Moy Park choose Expel?

Prior to installing Expel, the Dungannon site were using traditional inline compressed air filters which contained saturable internal elements which need replacing on a regular basis. As a result, unnecessary wastage was going to landfill, continual filter element replacement costs were being generated and crucially, as the efficiency of the internal elements decreased, the risk of water, oil emulsion fluids and solid particulates passing through and compromising pneumatic equipment was high.

Expel is not like any other product currently on the market. Unlike other compressed air filters, Expel does not contain any replacement elements meaning its performance remains consistent at 99.999% no matter how much it is used. Seeing the instant money saving potential that Expel could offer, Engineering Manager Neville Holland took decisive action and installed the revolutionary Expel filter just before the point of use. Not only was Expel able to save the site money, but it ensured superior equipment protection and stopped liquid water, oil emulsion fluids and solid particulates from reaching the critical robotic equipment and causing damage.