Honey being a biological substance and intended for food & pharmaceutical use needs greater attention in quality and its handling.

The moisture content in honey plays an important role in deciding the quality of honey. Honey with more than 20% moisture are thinner in consistency. The moisture content in honey increases due to hygroscopic nature of honey in which the surrounding atmosphere moisture is absorbed by honey.

Too much water in honey causes it to ferment.

Processes Involved

• Liquification
• Pre-Heating and Straining
• Micro-filtration
• Inactivation of Yeast Cells (Processing)
• Vacuum Evaporation
• Cooling of Honey

Composition of honey prepared in our honey processing plant

• Water (Moisture) 20%
• Fructose (Levulose) 37%
• Glucose (Dextrose) 34%
• Sucrose (Non - Reducing Sugar) 5.0%
• Total Ash (Minerals) 0.25%
• Acids Organic 0.20%
• Proteins, Amino Acids, etc. 1.50%
• Other ingredients including pollen grains 1.05%

In some countries non dairy creamer / coffee whitener is used for whitening of coffee or tea.

Non dairy creamer / coffee whitener normally consist of :

• Maltose syrup - 60 to 64.5%
• Corn / Palm Oil - 30.8 to 35%
• Sodium Caseinate - 2.1 to 2.5%
• Emulsifying agent - 0.05%
• Moisture - 2.5%

The final specification of coffee creamer which is instantly soluble free flowing white powder are as under

• Moisture - 2.5 to 3.0%
• B.D - 0.35 to 0.5 g/cc
• Mean particle size - 150 µ (micron)
• Solubility index - 0.1 to 0.5

The manufacturing process has the following steps

• Mixing of ingredients
• Homogenization of mixture
• Spray drying

Plant operations
The canisters, stacked in layers on a pallet, are placed on a rotary table that discharges into a downward chute made of twisted metal rods.

The worker can manually place a scoop into each canister as it passes on through the conveyor. The row of cans pass beneath a rotary auger filler set to deposit the correct quantity of coffee. After filling, the canisters pass through a can seamer that applies a metal bottom. This is followed by a ink-jet coder that prints the manufacturing date to the metal bottom.

After this, the twister sets the canisters upright on the conveyor that are conveyed to an applicator for plastic overcaps. Side belts move the cans through the unit and the over-caps are fixed on the top portion of the foil membrane. Finally, the cans are delivered to a rotating accumulation table.

Salt Refinery are mainly of two types:

• Vacuum Refinery
• Mechanical Refinery.

Where the purity of the Nacl a more than 95% and insoluble are low (max mum 1.5%1 a Mechanical refinery can purify the salt. But when the Nacl contain in the salt is less (In Bangladesh typical value of Nacl content is around 75-77%) and large amount of insoluble like mud and sand are present the salt Purification is only possible by a vacuum refinery.