A manufacturer of baking and process systems added an automated expanded snack system to its Science & Innovation Center in Sinking Spring, Pa.

Reading Bakery Systems’ snack system can be used to test the production of expanded snacks from corn, rice and other cereal ingredients. It can produce many shapes of expanded snacks, including curls, balls, ribbons, popcorn shapes and rings

The snack system includes a ribbon blender; an ingredient-transfer system to automatically refill the extruder; a high-pressure extruder; and a pneumatic-transfer system to move extruded products to the tumble dryer. The high-pressure extruder can operate at variable speeds to suit product processing needs.

Customers can use the 30,000 ft2 licensed food processing research-and-development facility to test food processing and production methods for batch and continuous mixing, forming processes and convective and radiant baking equipment.