Meating Point - Apr 2020


LIMA, A WORLD OF SEPARATION

Since the time of its incorporation in 1981, LIMA is a company which has specialized itself in the design, manufacturing and sales of meat-bone separators, deboning and desinewing machines for the poultryn pork, lamb, beef and fish industries.

The company is located in the town of Quimper in the Brittany region, in the western part of France. Equipped with the most up-to-date machine tools and facilitis, LIMA keeps on innovating new mechanical separation technology. Its factory, in addition to manufacturing, offers testing facilities in its modern laboratory.

Numerours LIMA machines models, with separating capacities ranging from 100 to 20 000 kg/hr (220 - 44,000 lbs), corresponding to the highest EU and US quality standards are at 95 % exported worldwide through a team of distributors servicing over 100 countries on the 5 continents.

For those not evolving in the poultry or meat industry, the word LIMA may only be associated with the magnificent capital city of Peru.

However, since its modest beginnings in the 80's, LIMA which in French translates to Les Innovations Mécaniques Alimentaires, The Mechanical Innovations for the Food industry, rapidly made a name for itself by becoming one of the most acknowledged world leaders in its field at this current time.

We may say that mechanical separation is their life at LIMA as they are 100% dedicated to this. Their job is to separate the hard from the soft using a mechanical means.

The purpose is to maximize the value of co-products, such as, wings, necks, drumsticks as well as poultry carcasses after automatic cut-up lines, which would otherwise be discarded or sold at a vary low price as it wold be virtually impossible to recover all this meat from the bones manually. The separation of the meat from the bones is performed by using a rotary auger into a filter. The machine gently pre-crushes the bones and as the auger pushes the raw material through the filter, the pressure is easily regulated by adjusting the distance between two conical parts at the bone exit of the machine. A gaduated device enables the operator to know exactly in which pressure adjustment the machine is. As the pressure increases on the raw material, it enables the soft parts - the meat - to extract through the openings of the filter. The harder parts, suh as the bones, continue further and exit the machine. The first and most common use of such separated meat, referred to as Mechanically Separated Meat (MSM) is the production of fine paste sausages such as Frankfurters for instance.

This is avoiding a considerable amount of non-desired side effects of the animal production.

This is a very significant amount of meat protein which is transformed into sausages or other meat products and offered on the market, generally at a very affordable price. In this sense, LIMA machines are serving a "green oriented" attitude.

LIMA has always been a prime mover in the development of new separation technology and filed several international patents.

Among the developments which were made by LIMA, only to quote a few:

   - 1984: Original one-piece slotted filter/auger patent on its LIMA S meat-bone separators for the production of excellent quality MSM at high yield.

   - 1994: Low pressure deboning head (filter + auger) patent with the manufacturing of its first low pressure deboners which enables to separate meat from the bones with a better texture and consistency, closer to a minced meat.

   - 1999: Very low calcium deboning head development.

   - 2006: First pork skin/fat separators even for the hardest prok skins.

   - 2001: First BSP beef meat bones separators with incorporated bones pre-breaker for a high quality beef structured MSM.

   - 2015: New very large capacity LIMA RM 2000 S separator for chicken bones up to 20 000 kg/hr (44,000 lbs/hr), with very low maintenance cost features.

These developments enable LIMA to propose their customers with a full range of:

- Meat-bone separators type S for the production of excellent quality MSM at high yield, sometimes referred to as "LIMA meat" by their customers.

- Deboners for the production of very high quality separated meat in terms of Structure, Color and a low Calcium content, less than 1 000 ppm, commonly also referred to as "3 mm MSM" or "structured MSM" on the market.

There are many mechanically deboning applications, such as; necks, V bones, drumsticks, front carcasses and wings for raw poultry materials, and back bones, necks and ribs for pork.

- Desinewers remove 80 - 96 % of tendons, sinews, cartilages, bone chips from deboned meat cuts such as, trimmings, aponeurosis and shank meat. Resulting in an excellent recovery of desinewed meat while C/P ratios remain under controlled values and the temperature remains constant throughout the process.

LIMA machines benefit from the following advantages:

     - No pre-breaking needed,

     - Single stage operation,

     - Low maintenance cost,

     - Optimum high yields,

     - Quick use and operator friendly.

LIMA in its daily endeavour to develop equipment which actually fit its customers various sepration needs, has standardized its range of equipment in order to enable most separators to be changed over into deboners of desinewers and vice versa in a quick, easy and effectiv way.

With customer input, other specific applications have been developed throughout the years. These are not only for the human food industry, but also the pet food and collagen industry..

For example:

- Pork-fat - skin speraration, the good quality fat being reused in the formulation of further processed meat products and the defatte skin being used by collagen manufacturers.

- Cartilage separation from pork tracheas of beef gullets, have many uses in the cosmetic and pharmacutical industry.

Other soft bones coming from fish central bones after filleting or fish flaps can also be separated from the fish pulp, such fish pulp being used for the formulation of further processed products for human or pet food consumptions.

LIMA's expertise and experience has enabled the company to develp and propose his customers with deboners for much harder bones such as pork or beef.

These participates even more to the already established reputation of robust, user friendly and efficient separation equipment LIMA has.

It would take a very long article to enumerate all the separation capabilities of LIMA and what LIMA's customers actually separate, some animals being sometimes more exotic than those already mentioned. LIMA had estimated back in 2014 that more than 1 500 000 metric tons of separated meat were processed every year on LIMA separators, and this number keeps growing on. Definitely, LIMA has a world of separation!

LIMA actively participates to more than 35 different tradeshows a year, many of them being specialized in the poultry, meat and fish industries such as IFFA in Frankfurt, ANUGA FOODTEC in Cologne, IPPE in Atlanta, SIAL in Paris, SEAFOOD PROCESSING shows in Brussels and many VIV shows in Europe, Asia and in the Middle East.

Please feel free to come and meet us on this occasion to discuss about your separation needs.