Green Planet Farms automates pioneering food ingredient plant

South Sioux City, Nebraska - Green Planet Farms (GPF), based in South Sioux City, has selected a process automation system from Rockwell Automation to help process the  - an ingredient for food products, such as milk, protein shakes and snack foods.

At full production, GPF can process 68,000 acres of organic soybeans annually. Based on the success of the plant, which opened in November 2008, the Nebraska company aims to open another organic soy processing plant in 2011.

Unlike other soybean processing plants that rely on hexane to separate protein from the fat, sugar and fibre found in soy flour, GPF developed a water-based process for its new organic soybean processing plant to separates these elements more naturally.

The Rockwell system manages more than 100 batch and continuous process phases designed to separate and dry the isolates. The automation system also features the same vendor's HMI software to help meet its track-and-trace requirements, as well as process instrumentation from Endress+Hauser and wireless solutions from ProSoft Technology.

“As a manufacturer, we are focused on ensuring that we produce products and food ingredients in an environmentally responsible manner,” said Susanne Stoeger-Moore, GPF board chairman and chief marketing officer. "We knew automation could help play a role in enabling our sustainable production practices.” 

As a pilot plant, the primary system integration challenge involved migrating from a lab environment to a full scale, automated manufacturing process, added Vince Krueger, project engineer, ESE Inc.  “We had a general idea for how the production process should run, but as with most pilots, transitioning from a lab environment requires maximum design and manufacturing flexibility.”