A head start for Mazzraty

Thanks to the Al Mana Group’s experience in construction and a strong management team leading the project, the plant was completed in a truly exceptional time. Success was down to the close cooperation of all parties involved. After two years of planning and construction, the plant was commissioned in 2018, exactly 24 months from kickoff. Plant manager Said Jamous says, “The team members from Marel Poultry did a great job in supervising installation, commissioning and training. They were very helpful and did their job very professionally. The team made great efforts to train our staff effectively and used every minute to teach our people all possible knowledge on the equipment. Operational and technical training was very valuable and efficient. I’m convinced that our team, including our technicians and operators, is now well qualified to run all lines.”

Reuse

In the Mazzraty plant, a semi-automated GP System takes care of live bird supply. After being shackled, broilers are killed manually according to Halal rules. As Mazzraty wants to recycle both materials and energy, the Marel Poultry scalder is the perfect choice. Thanks to its closed cover, steam can’t escape. Instead, the preheated air is used to agitate the scald water. Even heat generated by the motor is used efficiently in the process.

Full-blown evisceration department

The Mazzraty evisceration department is an excellent example of a completely automated process. All operations are performed mechanically with virtually no human input needed. Installed behind the Vent Cutter and Opening Machine, the Nuova eviscerator does its job precisely. This includes automatically rehanging viscera drawn from the cavity to a viscera pack shackle; giblet harvesting is also fully automated. The PGI always has been and still is a unique machine which removes intestines and gall bladder without the risk of damage to the liver. Heart, lungs, gizzard and liver are also harvested automatically by various Marel Poultry machines.

Overnight upgrade

As for the products themselves, they follow the usual route through NIC neck inspection, NeckCracker and FIM RotoVac final inspection machines. An integrated inside/outside washer in the NIC deserves special comment. It is ideal for these capacities. There’s no need for a separate inside/outside washer; the combined concept saves both space and money. The overhead conveyor in the evisceration department has trolleys at 6” pitch but shackles at 12” pitch. Carrousel machines have half the usual number of units. This means that Mazzraty is well prepared for future expansion to 6,000 bph [100 bpm]. Simply by adding back the “missing” shackles and units, by extending the scalder and adding pluckers and by extending the line in the chill tunnel, the plant can double its capacity virtually overnight, without any significant break in production. With end product presentation very much in mind, Mazzraty made a conscious choice for air chilling. The unique DownFlow+ air chilling tunnel is equipped with spray cabinets. These moisturize products and balance lower temperatures and humidity levels perfectly with no risk of freezing or discoloration.

Grading and batching

Products are graded semi-automatically into A, B or C quality grades by operatives using a QS-3 station. Based on this and on weight information, Innova PDS software system controls the unloading stations in the distribution line to release products for sale whole or for manual cut-up. Mazzraty cuts some 20% to 30% of its throughput using two MC300 cutters. The cut chicken pieces are then loaded into a Marel TargetBatcher. As Qatar is a purely fixed-weight market, all of Mazzraty’s chicken pieces are fixed-weight batched. The TargetBatcher is an easy way of doing this with minimum giveaway. Batched products are then dropped from 14 holding bins onto a cleated conveyor belt, so that they can be placed onto trays easily. Operators style trays manually on a PaceLine manual packing line. Finally, a WPL9000 Weigh Price Labeler – the first to be installed in the Middle East region – wraps up the packing stage. It applies labels to all products from vacuum-packed whole birds to fixed-weight trays.

Water Treatment

Mazzraty is concerned about the impact of its activities on the environment. For this reason, a lot of attention was paid to treating the plant’s wastewater. Marel Water Treatment designed a modular installation, which now works excellently at the current processing capacity and is also prepared for 6,000 bph [100 bpm]. “We know from experience that poultry companies always grow faster than other industries, so we already prepared the water treatment installation at Mazzraty for easy expansion in the future,” says Eric Nab from Marel Water Treatment. The facility is designed to not waste or leave behind residual material from before, during or after processing. Mazzraty benefits from this cycle by extracting irrigation water for the surrounding fields.

About Mazzraty

Mazzraty is a Qatari based company, established in 2013 and initially involved in the production of cattle feed. Planning for a complete integration began in 2016. Two years later Mazzraty started producing products reared locally on natural feed. As well as a state-of-the-art poultry processing plant, the vertically integrated Mazzraty supply chain now includes farms, a hatchery, a feed mill and a biological fertilizer facility. The project has been designed from scratch, with the mission statement “Lead by example” always in mind. The Mazzraty program is completely in line with Qatari government policy to become self-sufficient in food production and less dependent of imports. Mazzraty’s current customers are mainly supermarkets but also restaurants. It is a proper retail poultry plant with a potential national market of 2.6 million people.