When equipment becomes worn-out, outdated, or isn’t functioning at optimal performance levels, business owners and managers have to make a decision to either fix what they have or replace the item all together. Large pieces of contract manufactured food equipment can cost tens or even hundreds of thousands of dollars to replace, so these decisions can’t be taken lightly.

Use Historical Data to Estimate Value of Refurbishment

The goal is to get as much possible value out of a piece of equipment without negatively interrupting production. If you can extend the life of a piece of equipment, it’s possible that you can get more value out of the item, but you have to understand the value of the item to make that decision. Refurbishing an aging piece of equipment is a double edged sword. While it can potentially save you thousands, ongoing maintenance could also end up costing more than what it would have otherwise cost to replace the item.

Figuring Out the Cost of Food Processing Equipment

Here’s an example: You’ve already gotten 10 years out of an old car and it suddenly needs a new transmission. You could invest in the new transmission, but what’s to stop some other major problem from popping up two years down the road? As a car owner, you have to decide if fixing the car is worth the investment, or if you’re better off buying a new car. The same principals apply to maintaining a clean-in-place (CIP), conveyor, pasteurizer or other piece of food processing equipment.

As the owner or manager of large food processing equipment, you’re faced with the same dilemma as the car owner. Ignoring issues like cash flow, taxes, and financing, you can use historical data about the equipment to help make your decision. Say on average you get 20 years out of $300,000 piece of equipment. Each year is worth approximately $15,000, right? This means a refurbishment that is expected to extend the life of your equipment should cost less than the equivalent annual cost of purchasing a new version. If a refurbishment is expected to cost $60,000, it needs to extend the life of the equipment by at least 4 years; otherwise, you’re losing money.

Money-Saving Retrofits of Coolers & Pasteurizers

With your responsibility of maintaining production reliability and efficiency, you are aware of the impact of premature failure of bearings, belts, sprockets, drives and idler shafts compounded by excessive maintenance costs and unscheduled downtime. But, how do you implement change?

SMT Food & Beverage has spent the past fifteen years serving customers and understanding these challenges and engineering cost-effective solutions. Our designs assist in improving the efficiency and productivity of your processing equipment—optimization uptime of over 90%.

Bringing in SMT Engineers to Evaluate Equipment

The engineers at SMT hit the field to service, support and evaluate equipment, provide documentation and support for future maintenance, and can help get fabricated items down to the most exacting details. Being located in the United States gives us a distinct advantage over our competitors, because we can easily come on site to your location and help you decide if a retrofit or refurbishment will be worth the investment.

Hiring a Contract Manufacturer

We have experience in a wide range of industries, but have specialized in both the food and beverage industry, as well as the brewing industry. Contact us if you’d like one of our engineers to help evaluate a large commercial tank, conveyor system, tunnel pasteurizer, CIP, or other contract manufacturing solution.