From Manual to Automated: Building a Future-Ready Cheese Coating Line with VERFOODSOLUTIONS
July 17, 2025Admin
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Recently, a state-of-the-art cheese coating line was shipped to Saudi Arabia, featuring a 300mm belt width forming machine, drum preduster, tempura battering, breading,continuous frying, and cooling stages. This advanced system is designed to produce cheese strips and cheese blocks, as well as tempura battering and crumb breading for small cakes—highlighting its versatility and potential for future expansion. The journey to this innovation began with a simple idea back in 2021, evolving into a robust solution designed to meet rising demands and streamline manual processes into automated excellence. Originally, their product line involved manual processes for coating cheese blocks and strips, but as demand grew, manual labor simply couldn’t keep up with their ambitions.
By early 2025, the customer visited us with more detailed plans, initially requesting a small 100mm wide mini forming machine with an 80kg-100kgs/hour capacity, then progressing to a 200mm wide coating system. Ultimately, they confirmed a larger, 300mm wide setup capable of producing 300kg per hour—ready to support their expanding cheese coating business. This upgrade exemplifies how our forming, coating, and frying equipment can empower food producers to scale up efficiently, increase capacity, and unlock new growth opportunities in the cheese processing industry. Let us delve into this blog to explore how this innovative coating line is revolutionizing cheese snack production and what it means for Saudi Arabia customer business’s future.
Forming Machine
The customer initially aimed to produce 2x2x2 cm cheese blocks and 8x2x2 cm cheese strips. After discussions, they confirmed the size of the cheese strips, and the cheese cubes they want much more capacity with 300kgs per hour, so they choose another cube cutter, and this forming machine can do much more than just that in cheese strips making. In addition to producing meat patties and nuggets—such as beef, pork, chicken, and seafood—the machine can also create a wide variety of products like vegetable and plant-based patties, cheese and herb-infused bites, and flavor-enhanced snacks. With a capacity of 250-300 kg per hour and max patty diameter 140mm with adjustable thicknesses from 6 to 18mm, this versatile machine is ideal for small and medium-sized entrepreneurs looking to enter or expand in the coating industry. It can manufacture an extensive range of products across meat, vegan, seafood, and cheese processing industries, making it a highly multipurpose solution.
The customer’s large cheese blocks—measuring 50x50x300mm—are frozen at -5°C and then cut into 2cm cheese cubes. Our cube cutter machine is perfectly suited for this task, with a inlet chamber size of 84x84x350mm, ensuring smooth and efficient operation. Additionally, a custom 2x2cm cutting blade set was designed specifically to produce uniform cubes with ease. This cube cutter can cut meat and cheese at temperatures as low as -6°C, making it ideal for processing square cubes in meat and snack manufacturing. The system offers two output options: 350-550 kg/hour and 500-800 kg/hour. The Saudi customer selected the smaller capacity model to meet their specific demand of around 300 kg per hour.
The cheese cubes prepared by the customer need to be seasoned before coating. While our standard tumbler operates at a speed of 8-10 revolutions per minute, we customized the speed to 5 rpm to accommodate the special characteristics of the customer’s cheese, which may be fragile during tumbling. This variable frequency drive allows for precise speed control, protecting the motor during startup and ensuring a smooth, reliable operation—gradually increasing from slow to fast. Additionally, the lower tumbling speed helps maintain the cheese cubes in optimal condition throughout the process, making flavoring and subsequent coating more effective and convenient.
Drum Preduster
For small cheese blocks measuring 2×2 cm, ordinary flat-plate preduster machine often struggle to achieve uniform coverage on all surfaces. To address this, we recommend our drum preduster machine, which gently rotates the cheese blocks to ensure even coating. This gentle rotation promotes consistent powder application, especially for marinated or sticky chicken blocks, where traditional flat-plate flouring machine may leave uneven coverage. Using the roller coating not only enhances flavor infusion but also increases the product weight, maximizing profits. To further improve the process, we added a row of vibration blocks at the outlet of the roller machi+ne, which helps shake off excess powder. This results in a thin, even layer of coating, leading to a more uniform battering, a smoother surface, and a brighter appearance after frying.
Tempura Battering Machine
The customer’s cheese strips and cheese blocks, after being cut and rolled, are dipped in a batter made from egg and milk starch. They require a process that is both safe and fast, so we adjusted the speed of the drum preduster and tempura battering machine mesh belt to range from 3 to 15 meters per minute, with a maximum speed of 15 meters per minute. This allows the products to pass through the machine quickly, maintaining batter freshness and ensuring efficient coating. Additionally, the same equipment is used to make batter for a popular local snack—small cakes coated with a layer of chocolate and egg slurry, then fried to set the surface, air-cooled, and fried again until golden. Due to space limitations, the customer opted to add a heating sleeve to the dipping machine, which maintains a set temperature to keep the chocolate in a melted state. We customized this heating sleeve so the machine can also be used for small cake production in the future as their capacity expands.
After tempura battering, the next step is coating the cheese with breadcrumbs to create a crispy outer layer that enhances flavor and visual appeal after frying, enticing customers. To improve this process, we upgraded the original roller to a stainless steel roller, ensuring the breadcrumbs are evenly pressed onto the product for a more solid and durable coating during frying. Additionally, a discharge baffle was added at the outlet to prevent breadcrumbs from splashing, helping to keep the factory floor clean, and to avoid excess breadcrumbs falling into the frying oil, which could cause contamination and affect oil quality.
Mesh Belt Machine
The customer’s coating process involves two turns and utilizes four mesh belt machines simultaneously. One of these is designed to capture excess materials from the crumb feeder, effectively preventing bread crumbs from falling into the frying oil and causing contamination. The other three mesh belt machines feature two different widths: a 300mm belt width for compatibility with the front coating equipment and a 300mm belt width for the fryer, which we designed with a 400mm belt to facilitate seamless docking and operational practicality. This setup ensures smooth integration across the entire production line.
Belt Conveyor Machine
To optimize space, we designed a custom turning machine for this customer. The line includes two turns: one between the coating and frying/air-cooling line, and another before the existing IQF. The first turn uses a 300mm mesh belt, while the second employs a 400mm mesh belt, matching the mesh belt machine specifications. Both turning machines can be customized in length according to site requirements. Due to space constraints, we limited the length of this turning machine to 1 meter, which effectively allows direction changes while saving valuable space.
Continuous Fryer Machine
The customer’s cheese block output is approximately 300 kg per hour, which can be efficiently handled by a 3.5-meter fryer. The heating method for this equipment can be customized; typically, customers prefer electric heating for its convenience at this length. Initially, the customer considered gas heating to save energy. We provided a gas heating plan and discussed options, including upgrading to a 600mm mesh belt width with built-in heat exchanger heating, but this was ruled out due to site limitations. Another option involved maintaining the current mesh belt width and installing a heat transfer oil system with a dedicated furnace. However, space constraints prevented this solution as well. After careful evaluation, the customer ultimately chose electric heating. The fryer is equipped with an automatic lifting device to better remove residual oil and save labor, as well as an automatic slag discharge system to continuously remove slag during frying. This helps keep the frying oil cleaner and extends its service life.
Air Cooler
The customer already has an existing quick-freezing channel in their workshop. We designed the air cooler to fit within the remaining space, as the customer requested to leave about 1.5 meters of space on the left side of the factory for manual cleaning, maintenance, and material handling. Consequently, the available area can accommodate an air cooler approximately 4,500mm long. This air cooler operates on a fan principle, blowing cool air to quickly reduce the temperature of cheese blocks and strips coming from the fryer. It effectively saves energy by reducing the load on the quick-freezing channel below and also consumes less electricity. Additionally, the cooler helps blow off excess frying oil from the surface of the products, resulting in less oily food and promoting a healthier diet.
Site Planning and Expansion
The Saudi Arabian customer has a limited space of 12 meters in length and 7 meters in width for their coating and frying equipment. After half a year of consultation, we finalized an equipment layout tailored to their site, and they are scheduled to visit China soon to test the machinery. They also plan to expand their small cake production and are selecting a new plant, with future plans to extend their coating line to include dipping, crumb frying, and re-frying processes—details they will revisit with us during subsequent consultations. We will provide detailed drawings for each modification to facilitate internal discussions and ensure seamless communication, and by sharing their site details and coating ideas, we can design customized plans that adapt to their evolving needs until fully satisfied. We look forward to partnering with this customer on cheese product coating and helping expand coating markets across the Middle East market.
This cheese coating line truly demonstrates how thoughtful design and tailored solutions can turn a simple idea into a thriving production system. From the versatile cube cutter that produces uniform 2x2cm cheese cubes, to the tumbling process that infuses flavor gently, each step is carefully crafted for efficiency. The drum preduster ensures even coverage, while the tempura battering machine and continuous fryer work together to create crispy, golden snacks with ease. The compact air cooler quickly reduces temperature and oiliness, fitting perfectly into limited space while maintaining product quality. As they plan to expand their product range and production capacity, we look forward to supporting their growth with equipment like the forming machine, breader, and coating line—ready to help turn their ideas into delicious realities. If you’re ready to elevate your food coating business, contact us today to discuss your customized solutions!
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