Blog

Shelf Life of ExPress® Products

Back in 2017, I wrote about the shelf life of soy ingredients made with Insta-Pro equipment, such as Full Fat Soy, ExPress® Soymeal and Express® Soy Flour.  As we learned back then, the dry extrusion process does an excellent job of stabilizing the soy products, and with only around 5-6% moisture, these products last up to 12 months when stored up to 140F, which is a higher temp and longer time than one would typically store them in a commercial setting.

So today I want to remind everyone in an easy to reference chart what can come out of the ExPress® process and how long it will last.  In this case we will base everything off 1000 kg of soybeans:

Let us think about dry extruded full fat soy, which has a shelf life of 9 months (in all cases, it will vary depending on local storage conditions).  If you are a processor, you will want to be able to produce enough full-fat soy to satisfy the need in your complete feed.  Although it is possible, we do not recommend producing more than required because just like bread, the fresher it is the better it will taste.  If you are a feedmill selling your ingredient or making a complete feed, you and your customers will prefer a product that has been processed recently.

So how much storage do you need for your plant?  When designing an ExPress® plant, you will want to cover your monthly needs, and perhaps a bit more just in case, so if you have for example a 4 MTPH plant that runs 24 hours a day for 25 days each month, you will have approximately 1980 tons of ExPress® Soymeal and 300 tons of ExPress® Soy Oil.  If you have a capacity requirement of 1500 tons of meal and 250 tons of oil per month, the 4 MTPH plant is the correct size for you.

Storing any ingredient for 9 months is not practical for storage capacity and financial reasons, but university studies have proven that if needed, any of the above products will remain functional and maintain their nutritional value, which is a great benefit to our customers and those that use ExPress® or full-fat soy ingredients in their feed rations.

If you have questions regarding shelf life or correct sizing of your ExPress® extrusion plant, please reach our to us to discuss your project in detail.