Spectoms flags off India’s first dry food tanker ln Vadodara

Modified to meet Indian Conditions will reach it’s first destination in Delhi

Speaker of the Vidhan Sabha Rajendrabhai Trivedi flagged off India’s first dry food material tanker from Spectoms Engineering plant at Makarpura GIDC to their first client, Delhi Flour Mills on Monday. Manufactured by Spectoms with engineering inputs by Spitzer, Germany, the design of the tanker was modified to meet Indian conditions.

While tankers carrying liquids (such as milk), LPG, Gas (such as nitrogen), and of course petrol and crude oils are quite well-known, tankers that need to transport dry food materials is a very different challenge. The challenge has been successfully met by a Baroda-based company and they launched the first dry food material tanker in the country.

Gujarat is known to be the tanker capital of the country and most of India’s liquid, LPG, gas, cement, even milk tankers are manufactured in the state. Generally known as pressure vessels, these tankers when filled with liquid or gaseous materials, are easy to fill in and emptied with the application of the right pressure. However with dry solids, the manufacture of the tanker is a different challenge altogether.

Spectoms, an innovative light engineering industry based in Vadodara, which with technical expertise from Spitzer, Germany, that has designed and commissioned India’s first dry food material tanker. The work on this tanker to customize it to Indian weather conditions and standards has taken over two years.

This tanker after flagged off on Monday will reach the 100+ year old Delhi Flour Mills where it will be filled up with ten tonnes of maida (refined flour) that is to be supplied to its customer. It is an innovation that dovetails very well into the “Make in India” initiative of the Government of India.

The tanker as well as all its elements in touch with the food are manufactured with excellent food quality materials so that there is no contamination of the food materials carried within and transferred to the food containers at the customers’ facility. After the consignment is emptied, it is vacuum-cleaned very carefully so that not even one gram of the material Is left Inside which can go bad or rot and thus contaminate the next consignment.

In addition, this method will save a number of labour hours of filling woven plastic 20 kg bags full of the flour and carrying them on backs by labourers to be loaded on trucks and the same routine repeated where it is to be unloaded. It will save on hundreds of plastic woven bags that are environment unfriendly, will save on unnecessary labour-intensive work and wages and possibility of contamination during this entire process. On the other hand the tanker takes only fifteen minutes to be filled up by ten tonnes of material and same amount of time to be unloaded.

More urban Indians are now opting for ready to eat and easy to cook packaged foods in glass and plastic bottles, aluminum foil packets, plastic packets and pouches. The use of such contamination free tankers to transport raw food ingredients to food factories will play a significant role in the food and post harvest industries.