With the recently launched high capacity Industrie Rex AW, the AW standing for Accurate Weight, the world’s leading roll plant maker Koenig has found a solution to a perennial problem that was faced by both bakers and equipment manufacturers.

This is to make sure that while the dough is processed with great care the highest levels of weight accuracy are maintained throughout the production process.

This is the claim of European Process Plant managing director Steve Merritt, the Epsom-based company which has been enabling bakery innovation for 45 years. Operating in up to10 rows, the Industrie Rex AW dough dividing and round machine has a weight range of 22g to 140g and a maximum hourly capacity of around 30,000 dough pieces at 50 strokes a minute. It is therefore ideal for bakeries that are seriously looking to upscale their roll production.

Mr Merritt maintains that it is the combination of a newly developed dividing and rounding system with its continuously adjustable but absolutely even pusher pressure that ensures the highest levels of weight accuracy with all types of dough

In essence, the dough pieces are pushed into the dividing piston via a formed sealing ledge. This ensures that that the dividing chamber is filled without the dough coming under stress. Pusher pressures can be individually set to ensure that an optimal setting can be achieved for the processing of wide range of doughs. This information is stored in the program developed for a specific product.

Mr Merritt added: “It is the reliability, versatility and of course their longevity that makes Koenig roll plant so popular with bakeries whatever theirs size. Interest in them remains higher than ever as bakers increasingly recognise the benefits their gentle dividing and rounding action brings to their finished roll products whatever the dough.”

The new Koenig Industrie AW takes hygiene standards and ease of maintenance to a new level in high capacity automatic roll plants. In the Industrie Rex AW the drives are separated from the dough area and its large doors makes access for cleaning and maintenance very easy. Its large stainless steel and screwed feet which ensures a constant clearance height of 300mm is additional bonus when it comes to cleaning.

It is, however, not only with large capacity roll plant that Koenig has been setting new hygiene and cleaning standards. The stainless steel, medium capacity Rex Futura Multi which can divide and round up to 9,000 dough pieces an hour when working with six rows and up to 4,500 pieces an hour with three illustrates this point perfectly.

The main components of this  automatic machine including the dough feeding rollers, flour duster, dividing star wheels and drum cleaning brush can be easily removed which then allows  easy unrestricted access to the areas where dough and flour are found.

This is achieved by the operator simply changing the dividing pistons and rounding plate to the weight range and number of rows required and takes less than three minutes to complete. In addition, the Rex Futura Multi offers an impressive weight range starting as low 17g right up to 230g. It can also divide dough pieces up to 350g without rounding.

Steve Merritt explained that EPP has installed well over 1,300 Mini-Rex roll plants throughout Britain plus several hundred larger capacity machines. The majority of all Koenig machines supplied by EPP since the 1970s are still producing thousands of dough pieces an hour every day.

Interest in them remains higher than ever as bakers increasingly recognise the benefits their gentle dividing and rounding action brings to their finished roll products whatever the dough. Soft or firm doughs including white, wholemeal, fruited, hot cross bun, doughnut, brioche or pizza will not be a cause of concern the Rex Futura Multi.

Feeding the dough into the machine could not be simpler. It is simply placed in an easily accessible large hopper which includes a light beam security system.

The scaling weight, required capacity, rounding speed, rounding pressure and rounding eccentric are all controlled by the simple to operate Siemens touch screen panel (HMI) which also stores the settings for all the bakers’ products. The panel also offers diagnostic assistance for operators and maintenance personnel.

It is available either as a stand-alone machine or as part of a complete plant which could be specified with any of the following: intermediate prover/resting; stamping; forming (pinning and long moulding); seeding; and automatic traying up of the dough pieces.