Promtek process control drives Anpario’s automation ambitions

Promtek prides itself on creating industry-leading process control and automation solutions that continually overachieve its customers’ objectives. That is how the company has forged a worldwide reputation for excellence in the field. Anpario was looking to modernize its manual production process and align its factory with contemporary efficiency and sustainability targets. It was the perfect match.

Formed over 30 years ago from the merger of three respected animal nutrition companies, Anpario has achieved significant success in the agriculture, animal health, manufacturing, and animal nutrition markets. It provides services in Eubiotics, feed quality control, feed security, and natural feed additives. Anpario’s technologies are sold in over 80 countries around the world.

Being an international producer and distributor of high-performance natural feed additives for animal health, the merger that created Anpario resulted in the consolidation of the three separate companies’ production lines into one UK factory. Production volume at the single site spiked. In addition, the complicated legislative processes surrounding the manufacture of animal feeds necessitated the automation of the factory production line and the implementation of process control software and technology.

Shane Bailey, Anpario Operations Director, explained, “Automation is the smart way to manage everything – from raw materials to labor. Our rapid growth after the merger left us with many challenges – not least keeping up with customer demand for our wide range of products. Promtek’s process control automation and software platform was, and still is, perfect for our needs. The quick, easy, regular site visits are also great.”

Promtek set out to achieve several goals on the project, including increasing production line automation, integrating process control systems, improving the tracking and tracking of ingredients, and managing health and safety concerns.

To ensure the future viability of the Anpario production facility, the automation of the production line incorporated the ability to expand and add new lines on an ad hoc basis. Actual mixing value data is sent to the ERP system, showing updated stock values in real-time. Using Promtek’s customized control screen visuals designed to imitate real factory equipment - that also streamlines operator onboarding - the day-to-day business activities are managed seamlessly and more efficiently compared to the previous manual setup.

Product categorization within the process control platform improves finished product safety, as the software allows products to be categorized according to mixing sequences and schedules multiple production runs. This effectively eliminates cross-contamination between regulated ingredients. The system automatically produces barcodes from the ERP from a raw material pallet. Barcodes are internationally recognized, increasing the track and traceability of lot codes and bin numbers.

Capex expenditure in a suitable process control system that can deal with exponential growth requires complete buy-in and benefits to all business areas. From technical to purchasing, the investment in the automated process control system would show an ROI just two years after installation.

Shane added, “We currently have just over 300 recipes active on our process control system, which is twice as many as when we started working with Promtek. They took the time to understand our business, the flexibility they have given the company is first-rate, and the system is futureproofed. More than that, it’s really about the mutual trust we have developed over the years of working together as a team.”