The new Kronen processing line, which was recently installed at supermarket chain Lenta in St Petersburg, Russia, produces up to 600 kilograms of potatoes per hour.
Lenta is one of the largest supermarket chains in Russia, and the second-largest hypermarket chain of the country. Lenta has 195 hypermarkets in 78 cities all over Russia, and 53 supermarkets in Moscow, St Petersburg, Novosibirsk, and the central region.
For the introduction of a new product portfolio of cleaned, ready-sliced and vacuum-packed vegetables such as carrots, red beets and potatoes in different shapes and different packaging formats, Lenta sought an optimal option to produce these products advantageously and automated. With this background, Lenta turned to Kronen via the Russian Kronen representative Industrial Nutrition (www.ipita.ru), with the task of redesigning the processing processes of these products, and/or optimising them. Planning and realisation of this project led to a process optimisation, which now allows Lenta to reach optimum product quality, minimum waste and maximum flexibility.
Daria Lutskaya, left, manager of Industrial Nutrition; Robert Reisig, right, Export Area Manager for Kronen (Russian market). Photo: Kathrin Benz (Kronen GmbH).
The separate elements of the potato processing installation are:
- Bunker-belt for filling with potatoes or other vegetable products;
- Potato peeler PL 40K for removing peels and starch;
- Sorting table for selection and any post-cleaning.
As soon as the potatoes are cleaned and peeled, they are immediately transferred to the Kronen cutting machine. A choice can be made between two such machines:
- A KUJ V dice machine - for accurately cutting into dice and strips;
- A GS 10-2 belt cutting machine - for clean and accurate slices.