Bouillon Powder

Bouillon powder is a salty, slightly hygroscopic blend with fat content that can compact under pressure. Salt pulls moisture out of the surrounding air, and the fat carried by the meat, chicken or vegetable base softens as the room warms, so particles bind to each other instead of sliding past one another. It is a non-free-flowing powder: it will not run down a hopper wall on gravity alone. It bridges over the outlet, forms a rat hole beneath, then drops in a slug when the arch collapses — and a slug is an overweight pack. The same tendency shows at the seal, where caked seasoning and a thin film of fat on the jaws are the usual cause of leaking packs. Agitated auger dosing answers that behaviour, and it is the core of any bouillon powder filling machine. An auger meters by screw rotation — positive displacement that does not wait for the powder to flow — while an agitator keeps the bed in the hopper live so bridging never starts. A servo-driven auger repeats the same rotation on every shot, and the tooling around it (screw pitch and diameter, funnel, shut-off nozzle) is chosen for the particle size and fat level of the blend. Volumetric cup filling fits poorly here: a powder whose bulk density changes with compaction fills a fixed volume at a changing weight. A checkweigher after sealing corrects drift across a shift. Formats follow the way bouillon is used. The single-pot portion stick is the dominant unit — one stick per pot or bowl, torn and emptied without a spoon, with no open jar left behind to cake — so a bouillon powder stick pack machine runs the narrow three-side-seal format that suits a kitchen and a retail multipack alike. Four-side-seal sachets take over where the portion is wider or the pack has to carry more printed surface: seasoning kits, meal kits, foodservice cases. Larger pillow bags are produced on a VFFS line for catering packs and refills. In every format the film is a moisture barrier; without it the seasoning cakes before it is opened. Dose window and output are set on the product itself. The fill range depends on the auger tooling and on stick or sachet width, and since the bulk density of a bouillon blend moves with its salt and fat content, the auger is sized against your own sample rather than a table value. Output is not the cycle rate: a multi-lane machine makes one pack per lane per cycle, and lane count falls as the pack gets wider, so a wider portion on the same frame means fewer packs per minute. On a VFFS line there is no lane multiplier — one cycle is one bag. At Mentpack, bouillon powder runs on multi-lane stick pack and sachet packaging machines fitted with auger dosing groups, and on VFFS lines for larger bags. Stainless contact parts, auger sets that come out without tools for washdown, and dust extraction at the fill point are the details that matter on a salty, fatty powder. The machine is proposed after your sample and target pack are reviewed. Typical buyers are bouillon and seasoning manufacturers, private-label food producers, spice houses adding a portion line, and foodservice suppliers packing for kitchens, catering companies and hotel groups. Export co-packers run several recipes on one line, changing auger tooling and film reel between runs.