10 Jul Drying in all its forms
The Lesaffre group subsidiary (a world player in yeast) has established itself as a pure player in contract drying. Its advantage: the expertise of drying technologies allows it to process a very wide variety of products with productions ranging from a few kg to several tons.
Lesaffre Ingredients Services is “the Lesaffre group’s global benchmark in spray drying,” said Vincent Lechevalier, the company’s sales manager. A benchmark focused on service delivery, which represents the bulk of our production capacities “and” for which we deploy our investment capacities “. Both in terms of directly productive equipment (a new drying tower is put into service every 4 or 5 years) as well as for the development or pilot stages.
Lately, the company which relies on two production sites (Cérences in France, created in 1936, Legnica in Poland, since 2000), has set up a laboratory installed on the Biopôle of Rennes, near the University of Rennes: three engineers form a process & innovation team and work there to carry out co-development, feasibility studies, etc.
A first characterization step absolutely necessary before going to the pilot stage, LIS has four pilot towers distributed between its two sites and which have capacities of a few kg to a few hundred kg.
“An entry point into fine powders and microgranules” – before the mobilization of the dozen industrial lines – capacities from 2 to 50 tonnes / campaign. “We can scale up many drying issues”.
Various technologies
The strength of LIS is to have several drying technologies: single and multiple effect spray drying; continuous vacuum drying for heat-sensitive and / or pasty products, grannulation, encapsulation, etc.
“Our desire is to follow through on our service delivery logic,” explains Vincent Lechevalier. Leaving after seeking on behalf of its customers, solutions adapted to their problem of producers of natural extracts, fibers or dyes, LIS provides them with broader industrial solutions.
As of this spring, LIS will have post-drying facilities in order to make dry mixtures of powders. “We demonstrate that it is possible to innovate in drying technologies,” concludes Vincent Lechevallier.
Key figures
270 employees
2 production sites in France and Poland
13 drying towers