Increase your egg profit
Eggs are natural and delicate products. In the shell egg business where eggs with minor defects such as cracks have a negative impact on your profit, it is vital to treat eggs as careful throughout the entire process as possible. There is however not one single “magic trick” to maximize the number of eggs that ultimately end up in the consumer pack. Maximizing profits is the combination of multiple steps in the process.
Grading eggs not only helps you differentiate your product from others, it will also help you increase your profit. By grading eggs, products for retail are created with a higher value. As a trend you can see that besides traditional grades XL L M S more and more diversification takes place such as barn, free range, bio etc with even more product related features such as package, inkjet, labels etc.
Everywhere when eggs are handled, some eggs will be damaged in the process. This starts in the chicken houses, is continued in the transport process and ends ultimately when eggs arrive at the consumer. In many countries there is legislation on the maximum allowed number of cracks in consumer eggs, but also supermarkets and branch organizations may have their own quality standards. As the price difference between a consumer egg and a so called “offgrade” (egg with some kind of defect such as crack, dirt or blood) is significant, in the egg business it is all about getting the highest possible percentage of your eggs to the consumer.
There are two ways to grade eggs, either in an inline or offline configuration.
Offline: eggs are collected from the hen houses (hen houses are not connected to the grading machine) and placed on a grading machine by means of a loader.
Inline: the eggs are coming directly from conveyors of the hen houses to the infeed of the egg grading machines.
When grading offline, the eggs from the hen houses can be collected either in baskets or in trays. First potential breakage of the eggs starts at the farm, the best solution to avoid this is by collecting the eggs in trays instead of baskets. In baskets the eggs are unprotected from damage as they can collide against each other causing a high percentage crack. Furthermore, the blunt side of the egg is the most vulnerable part of the shell, both mechanically (chance for cracks) as microbiological, chance of penetration of bacteria. When packing the eggs point down in trays the air chamber stays on top, therefore the egg yolk will stay in place and the natural barrier of the air chamber is maintained, keeping its ultimate freshness. The conclusion is that trays protect the eggs not only from colliding against each other, it also keeps the eggs as fresh as possible.
Grading eggs not only helps you differentiate your product from others, it will also help you increase your profit. By grading eggs, products for retail are created with a higher value. As a trend you can see that besides traditional grades XL L M S more and more diversification takes place such as barn, free range, bio etc with even more product related features such as package, inkjet, labels etc.
Everywhere when eggs are handled, some eggs will be damaged in the process. This starts in the chicken houses, is continued in the transport process and ends ultimately when eggs arrive at the consumer. In many countries there is legislation on the maximum allowed number of cracks in consumer eggs, but also supermarkets and branch organizations may have their own quality standards. As the price difference between a consumer egg and a so called “offgrade” (egg with some kind of defect such as crack, dirt or blood) is significant, in the egg business it is all about getting the highest possible percentage of your eggs to the consumer.
There are two ways to grade eggs, either in an inline or offline configuration.
Offline: eggs are collected from the hen houses (hen houses are not connected to the grading machine) and placed on a grading machine by means of a loader.
Inline: the eggs are coming directly from conveyors of the hen houses to the infeed of the egg grading machines.
When grading offline, the eggs from the hen houses can be collected either in baskets or in trays. First potential breakage of the eggs starts at the farm, the best solution to avoid this is by collecting the eggs in trays instead of baskets. In baskets the eggs are unprotected from damage as they can collide against each other causing a high percentage crack. Furthermore, the blunt side of the egg is the most vulnerable part of the shell, both mechanically (chance for cracks) as microbiological, chance of penetration of bacteria. When packing the eggs point down in trays the air chamber stays on top, therefore the egg yolk will stay in place and the natural barrier of the air chamber is maintained, keeping its ultimate freshness. The conclusion is that trays protect the eggs not only from colliding against each other, it also keeps the eggs as fresh as possible.
Up to 20% damaged eggs are measured in egg transport in baskets or crates (left) while transport in trays (right) will reduce damage to values below 2%
In inline situations, there is no transport other than conveyors coming from the chicken houses bringing the eggs directly to the grader. When two eggs come in contact with each other with only a minor force, both egg shells will suffer damage from this impact and the weaker of the two can show hairline cracks or worse. Throughout the process this is unavoidable at some places, such as inline accumulation where a random egg flow coming from the houses needs to be converted onto the rollers of a farmpacker or inline grader. Modern accumulators are designed to load the eggs onto an egg grader with the least possible forces on the eggshells, but repetition of this procedure should be eliminated as this will cause additional cracks.
Therefore it is important that after the eggs are accumulated once, they are absolutely kept separate throughout further handling. This starts with loaders that overcome speed differences and so avoid egg to egg impact followed by a system often referred to as individual egg handling. Modern egg graders use more technology to keep speed-differences in machines as low as possible. Instead of just speeding up machine parts, it is rewarding to do more things in parallel with limited speeds, allowing eggs to be in individual cups rather than using a reservoir per packer lane where the eggs have to suffer the accumulation process with all impacts as a consequence, once more.
Therefore it is important that after the eggs are accumulated once, they are absolutely kept separate throughout further handling. This starts with loaders that overcome speed differences and so avoid egg to egg impact followed by a system often referred to as individual egg handling. Modern egg graders use more technology to keep speed-differences in machines as low as possible. Instead of just speeding up machine parts, it is rewarding to do more things in parallel with limited speeds, allowing eggs to be in individual cups rather than using a reservoir per packer lane where the eggs have to suffer the accumulation process with all impacts as a consequence, once more.
Keeping eggs individually separated during grading can result in up to 2% more eggs to the final consumer pack
Keeping the eggs in individual positions also means that the chance of cross contamination will be significantly less. If all individual eggs are known by the graders computer an operator is capable of controlling the egg quality on the pack accurate, produce different product qualities out of the same batch of eggs and as all data about origin and destination of each individual egg is know, it offers full and on the egg accurate traceability for free as a spin-off. This system with all the above characteristics is marketed under the name of “Individual Egg Handling”. Using such a set of measures in an egg grader can make a significant difference. Important players in the industry already confirmed that this can lead to getting 2% more eggs to the consumer packs compared with other technologies.
After the grader there is of course again a trajectory with manual handling. The consumer packs are packed in cases, on pallets and ultimately on the shelf of the supermarket. Egg consumer packaging’s comes in all sorts and types. From pulp to plastic from trays to consumer packs. A well designed consumer pack protects eggs from colliding against each other in this final part of the production chain, minimizing the chance of additional cracks in the final product once again. Next to that, creating an attractive appearance of the egg pack will also enhance the image of a quality product. This will help producers to differentiate products even more.
The conclusion is that there is not one single “magic trick” to obtain a high percentage of eggs going to the supermarket, but it is the result of many carefully managed steps in the process. In this process, keeping eggs separated in transport but also in an egg grader is the most vital element.
After the grader there is of course again a trajectory with manual handling. The consumer packs are packed in cases, on pallets and ultimately on the shelf of the supermarket. Egg consumer packaging’s comes in all sorts and types. From pulp to plastic from trays to consumer packs. A well designed consumer pack protects eggs from colliding against each other in this final part of the production chain, minimizing the chance of additional cracks in the final product once again. Next to that, creating an attractive appearance of the egg pack will also enhance the image of a quality product. This will help producers to differentiate products even more.
The conclusion is that there is not one single “magic trick” to obtain a high percentage of eggs going to the supermarket, but it is the result of many carefully managed steps in the process. In this process, keeping eggs separated in transport but also in an egg grader is the most vital element.