Family-run Alfonzo Rivas, Venezuela's leading breakfast cereal producer, has ordered the new system from bakery equipment supplier APV in order to increase the output of existing brands such as Fruity Aros, consisting of multi-coloured fruit loops, and ABCI-Toos, made up of alphabet shapes.
The new system is a twin-screw extruder, developed at APV's UK Food Innovation Centre and based on the company's SB80 solid-barrel extruder.
An APV statement said: "Twin-screw extruders give great flexibility and rapid changeover, particularly important in the highly competitive breakfast cereals market with growing consumer expectations of product variety."
Built to Alfonzo Rivas' specifications, the extruder should make the company more efficient by taking away the need for any further processing of cereals produced, except for sugar coating and drying.
"Alfonzo Rivas staff visited the APV Baker Food Innovation Centre at Peterborough in the UK in order to establish the exact process conditions required to replicate their current brands on today's high-powered, high-throughput extruders," said APV.
Alfonzo Rivas already runs one APV Baker extrusion system, plus a cornflake plant, at its factory in Turmero near Caracas.
In addition to the new extruder, the company will also receive an APV band dryer to help reduce moisture content in products ready for packaging, and a low solids coating plant to weigh, mix and cook a syrup from sugar, glucose and water, which can then be added to a coating drum for spraying onto the cereals.