Weald Granary, based in Maidstone, has made sure to put its Svegma continuous flow driers through their paces, only now replacing two units installed in 1987 and 1988.
“There is no question that our old Svegma driers had served us well,” said John Smith, Weald Granary’s managing director. “Located outside of our grain store they had been exposed to the elements for over 30 years and had many hundreds of thousands of tons of grain and maize go through them. It was no surprise that they reached the end of their lives!”
The new units were supplied by BDC Systems Ltd in time for last year’s harvest. Once the decision had been made to replace the existing machines, Mr Smith looked at alternatives, focusing on renewable energy and alternate fuels.
“We have a very compact site so renewable energy was not an option because of the storage space and labour required,” he said. “We wanted a drier that we could switch on, deliver instant heat and which we could just walk away and leave to get on with its job.”
Working closely with BDC, the firm decided to stick with Svegma due to the design and the company’s track record for reliability. The main bodies (one 6m with a throughput of 61 tonnes per hour, and one 3m offering 30 tonnes) were replaced like for like, with upgraded burners.
As the existing dischargers were still in good condition, these were kept on. While not everything above the discharge sections needed to be replaced, the labour involved with removing and refitting the handling equipment meant that it made sense to replace everything in one go.
The drier-filling conveyors, gantries, supporting steelwork, access platforms and ladders to the interconnecting silos were all reused, and a fresh pair of galvanised fans were installed on the new drier bodies.
“The new Svegma driers were installed just in time for harvest ’22 which turned out to be one of our driest and hottest so we only ended up drying 500t of wheat. But the driers had their baptism of fire in October when we needed to dry 1,500t of wet maize which came in at 30%,” continued Mr Smith. “As usual they did their job and did it well!
“The BDC team who worked on this project will most probably be, like me, well into our retirement by the time the new Svegma driers need replacing!”
For more information go to www.bdcsystems.com