How Wijay engineered a positive-pressure pneumatic conveying system for a leading Chinese bakery brand — integrating dust-free bulk transfer, precision dosing, and temperature-controlled water delivery across a high-throughput production facility.
- 8 t/hPeak conveying capacity
- 100 mMax horizontal transfer distance
- 50 mVertical lift height
- 11Synchronized mixing lines
Industry Challenge Bakery Ingredient Handling
As bakery and confectionery manufacturers scale production to industrial volumes, the limitations of manual and semi-automated ingredient handling become a significant operational constraint. Flour and sugar dispensed by hand or through open screw conveyors generate airborne dust that contaminates work areas and violates food-safety standards. Batch-to-batch inconsistencies in ingredient ratios introduce variation in texture, flavor, and shelf life. And without temperature-controlled water supply, dough hydration and fermentation behavior fluctuate with ambient conditions.
For a major Chinese bakery group expanding its “super factory” footprint, these challenges translated directly into production bottlenecks and quality-control risk. The company required a single integrated system capable of handling flour, granulated sugar, and purified water — from bulk receipt through to proportioned delivery at each mixing station — without dust emission, manual intervention, or temperature drift.
Core constraint: All three ingredients — flour, sugar, and process water — needed to share a unified automation architecture. Siloed point solutions would have created integration gaps and made centralized process data impossible to collect.
Solution : Positive-Pressure Pneumatic Conveying Architecture
Wijay designed and delivered a custom positive-pressure pneumatic conveying system built around three interlocking functional modules: an intake and bulk-storage subsystem, a temperature-controlled water preparation circuit, and a precision weighing and dispensing network connected to the production mixing hall.
Conveying mode: Positive pressure
Peak throughput: 8t / h
Horizontal reach: ~100m
Vertical lift: ~50m
Materials handled: Flour · Sugar · Process water
Control platform: PLC (centralized)
The positive-pressure approach was chosen specifically because it maintains a slight overpressure throughout the pipeline, preventing ambient air and contaminants from entering the material stream — a critical requirement for food-grade conveying. Centralized PLC control ties all three modules together, giving operators a single interface for setpoints, monitoring, and batch traceability.
Key Technical Highlights of the Conveying System
Dual-format intake and closed bulk storage
A combined sieving and intake station accepts both bulk bags (IBC totes) and smaller sacked material, eliminating the need for separate loading points. Flour is sieved on entry and conveyed to two dedicated large-volume storage silos. Sugar is directed to a separate sealed storage vessel. The entire intake circuit is fully enclosed — no open transfers, no dust release — meeting the cleanliness requirements of modern food-production environments and protecting hygroscopic materials from ambient moisture.
Temperature-controlled process water circuit
Purified water passes through a heat-exchange buffer tank before entering the production circuit. Operators set the target temperature directly from the control panel; the system automatically conditions the water to that setpoint before releasing it via centrifugal pump to each point of use. Maintaining consistent water temperature during mixing and fermentation is fundamental to dough rheology and product uniformity — a factor that manual hot-cold blending cannot achieve at scale.
Seven-station weigh dosing and synchronized multi-line discharge
Seven precision weigh-hoppers receive flour, sugar, and process water according to recipe parameters, then discharge simultaneously via gravity feed to 11 mixing machines operating in parallel. The gravimetric dosing approach — weighing by mass rather than volume — ensures each batch receives the exact ingredient ratio regardless of bulk density variation between deliveries. This architecture eliminates inter-batch inconsistency at the formulation stage rather than compensating for it downstream.
Perational Results and Business Value
The commissioned system addressed the four operational dimensions the customer identified as highest priority:
- Production continuity: Fully automated material flow from bulk receipt to mixer discharge removes the scheduling dependency on manual handling shifts, enabling consistent throughput across all operating hours.
- Batch-to-batch product consistency: Gravimetric dosing through the weigh-hopper network, combined with temperature-stabilized water, eliminates the two most common sources of formulation variance in high-volume bakery operations.
- Clean-room compliance: Positive-pressure enclosed conveying and sealed storage prevent flour dust from entering the work environment, reducing both occupational exposure and the risk of cross-contamination or ingredient degradation.
- Centralized data and process control: PLC-based operation with full process logging gives quality and operations teams traceable production data for every batch — supporting both internal quality management and external audit requirements.
Why Wijay for Food-Grade Ingredient Conveying
Wijay specializes in material automation systems for the food and industrial sectors, with particular depth in pneumatic conveying for powdered and granular ingredients. The Lejinjì project required integrating dry bulk handling, liquid conditioning, and multi-point gravimetric dispensing into a single cohesive system — an architecture that exceeds the scope of most equipment-only suppliers.
System-level engineering
Wijay designs complete handling architectures — intake, storage, conditioning, dosing — rather than supplying individual components.
Food-grade process knowledge
Enclosed positive-pressure conveying, sealed storage, and hygienic-design principles are standard across Wijay food-industry installations.
Multi-material integration
The ability to route dry solids and temperature-controlled liquid within a single PLC-controlled architecture reduces integration complexity and single-vendor risk.
Long-distance, high-lift capability
Conveying at up to 8 t/h across 100 m horizontal and 50 m vertical without degradation or segregation is an engineering requirement Wijay positive-pressure systems are specifically designed to meet.
Planning an ingredient automation project?
Wijay provides end-to-end material handling systems for bakery, confectionery, and food manufacturing — from feasibility review through commissioning. Tell us about your production volumes and materials and we will outline a solution.Get in touch .
