What resources have you overlooked? – Testing New Ingredients in R&D Part II
At Insta-Pro, some of the more interesting products that we have extruded are; turkey and broiler mortalities, by-products from slaughter facilities, radiator stop leak, ground mink carcasses, centrifuged eggshell, ground fish parts, municipal waste, turkey litter, dried hog manure, hydrolyzed feathers, substrate for mushrooms, off-spec food products and dehydrated plate waste.
This is just a sample of products that we have extruded. Of course, in addition to the items above, we have ran just about every grain and/or oilseed that our varying, growing regions can produce. In short, we have successfully processed many ingredients through our high shear dry extruders since the machine was invented in 1969.
Many of our projects start off as R&D testing. We get calls weekly challenging our service technicians, our Ph.D.’s and our executive staff by asking tough questions like: Can we run this product through Insta-Pro’s high shear dry extruder and if we can, what effect will your machine have on our ingredient? Is it possible to take some of the fat or moisture out of it? What effect will your process have on the nutritional value of the ingredient?
Will it overheat and catch on fire and damage our ingredient? Will it even flow through your machine? Will it be sterilized when it comes out? Can we blend something else with it and homogenize it? What effect does an extruder have on fiber? If we take this pile of awful looking stuff and run through your extruder will it turn into a high-value ingredient? Who will buy it once it is extruded?
Insta-Pro’s core business is processing oilseeds with our technologies. So if you know of an oilseed, we have probably tried to process it through our ExPress® process (extruding and pressing). You may be sitting on a unique resource and opportunity, give us a call to learn more.
