GEA debuts Comas and Imaforni processing lines

The company acquired Comas in Torrebelvicino, North Italy, in May 2015, which makes processing equipment in the cake and pastry industry in Europe and acquired Imaforni, based in Verona, Italy, which supplies processing equipment for the biscuits industry in February 2016.

Application Center Bakery

Marco Gandini, VP, head of bakery applications, GEA, said Imaforni complements GEA’s acquisition of Comas and will further strengthen the cake and pastry operations of its Application Center Bakery division with industrial biscuit lines for hard biscuits and crackers.

He highlighted GEA Comas and GEA Imaforni integrated bakery technology at the show in Dusseldorf, Germany last week (May 4-20) including a forming line for hard biscuits and crackers, consisting of a sheeter, lamination unit and set of gauge rolls.

The production line has been designed for regular products by gently processing the dough sheet.

Gandini said it is important to avoid stressing the dough sheet during the gauging process for consistent production quality this includes minimum tolerance on weight variation, accurate shape, aspect and color of the finished product.

Comas co-extruder for cookies

The line is completed with a dough sheet relaxing web, a rotary cutter, a scrap pick-up machine, a scrap return conveyor and an oven panner. GEA is able to offer lines of up to 2,000 mm in width for high capacity production.

Also on display was GEA’s Imaforni rotary molder for soft biscuits combined with a GEA Comas co-extruder machine for cookies - a production line for a variety of rotary biscuits, wire-cut cookies, smooth biscuits, two-color center-filled cookies and fig-bars.

Seen on show for the first time was the GEA Comas high-capacity cupcake production line mounted on a GEA Imaforni tunnel oven.

This includes a rotating paper cup dispenser to deposit self-supporting paper cups; multi-piston depositor with brushless motors and interchangeable head and a convection tunnel for baking.

GEA adopted the theme ‘Packed with inspiration’ at Interpack 2017 presenting systems for packaging of food, confectionery and baked goods, beverages as well as medical and pharmaceuticals technology.