Seal solution saves £182k in just 10 months

Issues with seals can cause costly downtime and expensive repairs. When problems caused by failing seals were identified at Nestlé Purina’s plant in Poland, AESSEAL was able to offer a solution, as Arkadiusz Jurzak, the company’s Strategic Project Manager, explains.

The installation of DMSC seals and MagTecta bearing protectors at its European plants has led to significant savings for the pet food manufacturer Nestlé Purina.

The company asked AESSEAL to provide a solution to two persistent problems. One problem was at a meat processing plant and was caused by a leaking and unreliable seal on a mixing machine. The water-based barrier fluid system could not cope with pressure fluctuations inside the mixer, so when the pressure in the mixer exceeded that of the barrier system, product began to penetrate the gland packing. This resulted in shaft wear and contamination of the barrier fluid system, resulting in mixer downtime and high maintenance costs.

The solution suggested by AESSEAL was to replace the gland packing with a DMSC dual mechanical seal, which is resistant to temperature and pressure fluctuations.

Just ten months after its installation, the DMSC seal was working continuously, maintenance-free, and had saved the company more than £182,000, with payback achieved in just three months. The company also estimated that it would save an additional £200,000 per line per year as a result of increased mixer uptime.

These savings, resulting from the performance and reliability of the AESSEAL DMSC seal, led to the decision by Nestlé Purina to install them in its plants across Europe.

The second problem that AESSEAL was asked to solve was how to remedy the persistent leakage from the lip seals on the rotary valves in the product packaging line at Nestlé Purina’s plant in Poland. This was causing damage to the valve housing and shaft sleeve, resulting in the seals needing to be replaced every four weeks. This process took around 33 hours, with the parts alone costing £68,000 a year per line.

AESSEAL recommended replacing the lip seals with MagTecta bearing protectors, which use mechanical seal technology to prevent leakage. The product’s non-contacting design also prevents wear on the shaft or housing. The result was an immediate improvement in the meantime between failure (MTBF) to three months. Subsequent upgrades to the bearings and housing sleeves have increased this to six months. The success of the MagTecta at its facility in Poland led Nestlé Purina to implement similar upgrades at its plants in Hungary, Russia, France, and the UK.

Arkadiusz Jurzak, Strategic Project Manager at AESSEAL Poland, explained how the relationship with Nestlé Purina came about: “The story started in 2015 when Nestlé Purina set up its plant in Poland. Until then, the company knew nothing about AESSEAL. My first contact in Nestlé Purina, Poland, was a reliability engineer who had transferred from Cargill, Poland. We had worked together for many years and had already co-operated on several important projects at the Cargill plant.”

The crucial factor which finally convinced Nestlé Purina to install the AESSEAL products was their long life. The first 85mm DMSC mechanical seal installed on the Siefer Trigonal Mixer in 2015 was tested for more than a year before being adopted as standard in the rest of Nestlé Purina plants.

Arkadiusz continues to have regular contact with Nestlé Purina Poland and visits the plant at least once every two weeks. As a result, AESSEAL now has the status of ‘Strategic Mechanical Seal Supplier’ for the entire Nestlé Purina group. Any new equipment supplied to Nestlé Purina should have an AESSEAL mechanical seal or bearing protection installed. chevron-circle-right