May 2012

Continental Products Corporation, a World leader in uniform mixing, dry blending and coating technology, and manufacturers of the Rollo-Mixer ® batch mixer; will be exhibiting in Booth # 4040 at the 2012 PTXi Show in Chicago May 8th thru May 10th.

We have been exhibiting the Rollo-Mixers at this show for 24 years.  Giving people a chance to see videos and data not found on line.  Our booth will feature over 175 samples of products accurately blended and evenly coated in the Rollo-Mixer, from over 15 business markets.   

We look forward to seeing you there!

November 28, 2011 By jkwok, www.nutritionaloutlook.com

The Rollo-Mixer Mk 8 rotary batch mixer is touted by its company, Continental Products Corp. (Milwaukee, WI), as a mixer superior in uniformity, cleanout, and overall efficiency compared to other mixers typically used in the dietary supplement and contract manufacturing industries.

The Mk 8 batch mixer uniformly blends dry particulates in 3 to 5 minutes. Like all Rollo-Mixers, the Mk 8 batch mixer creates rivers of material that gently divide and combine in the batch several times per revolution, resulting in a quick, gentle, and homogenous blend, the company says. The machine also allows the entire batch to empty completely within seconds.

Small-volume additions of vitamin additives are made easy using the technology, the firm says. "We blend batches with 80 ingredients where we can uniformly add 10 international units of a vitamin into hundreds of pounds," the company quotes a customer as saying in a video. "V and cone blenders can't do this, and ribbon mixers definitely can't do this."

The mixer was also designed with no mechanical drum seals in order to provide superior cleanout capability. The company says that easy cleanout and access are critical in food, specialty products, and high-purity batch-mixing applications. The Mk 8 machines can be rinsed and dried in 15 minutes, ready for the next batch.

The Mk 8 is one of five versions of the Rollo-Mixer line, which includes the Rollo-Mixer Mk VI Batch Mixer, the Mk VII Rotary Drum Mixer, the Mk VII-1 Rotary Drum Blender, the Mk VIII Powder Mixer, and the new Mk IX Batch Coater.

Rollo-Mixers are designed and built to customers' specific batch, blending, or coating applications. The Continental Rollo-Mixer is a rotary drum batch blender that uniformly blends ingredients having a wide variance in particle size, density, and proportions, typically in only 6 to 9 revolutions. Product moves by gravity in all planes. The gentle, low-shear, fast-mixing, positive displacement action creates continuous rivers of material, which course into and flow through one another in a random confluence.

April 4, 2011 By Dan Bolton, World Tea News Editor

Creating distinctive teas is challenging, yet essential to private label success.

Hand blending tea with dried fruit, flowers and flavors is a long-practiced art undertaken by master blenders who each leave an indelible idiosyncratic mark. It can take years of experiments to achieve the perfect blend of tea, flavor enhancements and embellishments.

And that's the easy part. It is only then you discover the challenges of scaling these qualities with the consistency customer's demand.

Customers respond to variety; retail economics favor quantity. Years of retail experience led to consumer favorites from Earl Grey to Jasmine Pearl but these are now available anywhere. What sets your retail shop apart is experimenting with variations inspired by trends and seasons. Once you achieve success, you must have the production capacity and flexibility to balance supply and demand.

These conflicting requirements led the gourmet tea industry to discover the Rollo-Mixer, a slow RPM rotary drum batch mixer from Milwaukee, Wis.-based Continental Products Corp. It is a versatile mixer capable of blending and flavoring batches of tea from 25 lbs. to 25,000 lbs. at a time.

Let's say the Greenbrier in West Virginia favors a tea blended with eight scoops of peach shavings while a tea house in Palm Beach, Florida prefers six, says CPC's President John Callaghan. "The Rollo-Mixer allows blenders to tweak the outcome of the finished tea and replicate it regardless of quantity," says Callaghan. Scaling is precise. "We can put 25 pounds in a 10 cubic foot mixer, perfect the sample and immediately scale up to run as many 250-pound batches as you like in the same machine," he explains. This avoids wasting raw product during testing and insures consistency in the finished blend, he says.

The device, which was invented in 1960, serves many industries, from dietary powders and vitamin supplements to blending finely ground aluminum. It is also used to make kitty litter and coat potassium powder carbonate with hot wax. "What sets our mixing and coating technology apart is the ability to uniformly blend particles of dissimilar size and density, while coating them evenly with liquid additives," says Callaghan. "That makes it perfect for tea," he says. Free-Fall processing, exclusive to the Rollo-Mixer, exposes the entire surface area of the batch.

Michael Cramer, President of Adagio Teas, has high praise for the Rollo-Mixer which is used to blend his own line of premium teas. The equipment's flexibility allowed us to fine tune the taste. We actually added a line of business," he tells the video audience. Adagio now offers custom blends for our customers. "They can ask for a particular blend unlike our own, with perhaps nine or 12 scoops of enhancements, and we can do that," says Cramer.

"It's really a simple mixing device that folds and divides each batch," says Callaghan. Most operations take one person to operate and unlike ribbon blenders, the Rollo-Mixer does not damage tea leaves or ingredients, as it turns at a gentle 3 RPM. In nine revolutions the batch is uniformly exposed allowing for precise "private label" amounts of exclusive liquid flavor to be added. Dry enhancements are distributed evenly. Click here to see how it works.

"It's like there are a bunch of guys with shovels in there, gently turning the batch. There is no fractured product resulting in "mechanically hand blended teas" and the entire process can take as little as three to five minutes," says Callaghan.

March 23, 2011 see agenda

3:00 PM - 4:00 PM EDT (12:00 PM - 1:00 PM PDT)
Mixing & Coating Granular and Bulk Solid Products

The ability to efficiently mix and coat granular and bulk solid products is a common challenge across many process industries. The secret of efficient mixing is the ability to divide and combine ingredients into a uniform blend with 100% particle distribution. In this presentation, attendees will learn about the benefits of solids processing using a product that has revolutionized many mixing, blending, and surface treating applications. They will also learn of a novel coating technology claimed to improve product quality while reducing raw material costs. The speaker has 30 years of experience mixing and coating dry particulates and has conducted more than 1,000 tests in the solids processing arena. Using videos, photos, and technical data, he will examine the vast world of mixing and coating, covering everything from plastic pellets to encapsulated enriched rice.

Key Take-Aways:

• Learn about the many industries that blend granular and bulk solid products and understand the importance of a uniform blend
• Discover how to apply light and viscous liquids to granular products with "free-fall processing"
• Learn how to scale up your process from pilot tests to production size batches

We invite you attend a 21st Century e-Event at GlobalSpec's Industrial Processing Virtual Trade Show. Continental Products Corp. has been asked to showcase 50 years of experience mixing, blending & coating fine powders with the Rollo-Mixer.

» Where: Register Online Now
» When: August 25th, 2010 2:00 PM - 3:00 PM

July 12th, 2010 By Natural Products, Uniformly Blending Nutritional Supplement Powders

As the nutritional product marketplace continues to grow, the search continues for efficient, consistent, quality solutions for dry blending. There persists, however, the basic need for uniform blending, even dispersion of low-inclusion additives, through clean-out and quick batch turnover. Unfortunately, not much has changed about the equipment used to blend nutritional, dietary and nutraceutical powders.

As formulators look to gain a competitive advantage and grow profit margins, they face many considerations, but the one factor commonly overlooked is the heart of the operation, the blender. Margins are minimized or maximized in the process- re-work, high energy costs, long blend times and a lack of easy clean-out usually inflate the cost of goods sold and, ultimately, affect the profit margin.

Most familiar in the dry-powder marketplace are ribbon mixers, cone blenders, V blenders and paddle mixers. While these are dominant technologies in this segment, most manufacturers experience similar problematic situations. As a result, the common standard of “uniform blend” is blurred. Read on about Uniformly Blending Nutritional Supplement Powders

Bill Callaghan discusses the benefits of the Continental Rollo-Mixer® batch mixer and showcases Continental's mixing, blending and coating technology. Continental recently brought a 5 cu ft Rollo-Mixer to Watt Ag in Rockford, IL. Those attending the demonstration saw the mix action through Plexiglas panels on the back of the mixer. Making it easy to see how our mixer gently folds, divides and combines the ingredients in 2-3 minutes.

» WATT Publishing Video

The Continental Rollo-Mixer® Mk VIII batch mixer is an exciting new addition to Continental's line of rotary drum mixing technology. The Mk 8 batch mixer is designed for uniformly blending dry particulates within 2 to 3 minutes. This revolutionary design is unique to the dry solids processing industry. The Mk 8 batch mixer is ideal for Food, Specialty Products and high purity batch mixing applications, where cleanout and easy access are critical for quick product change over between batches.

» The New Rollo-Mixer® Mk VIII Batch Mixer

Continental is proud to announce the release of our newly expanded website. We've upgraded from about 6 pages to more than 76 pages, including hundreds of photos in our Sample Gallery and information about the 15 business markets that we serve. We produce the world’s largest rotary drum batch mixer, and now we have the world’s largest rotary drum website to match!

» Website preview, live from PTXi 2008

All of us at Continental would like to thank those of you who stopped in our booth to learn more about our Advanced Mixing, Blending & Coating Technology in Chicago.

Continental Products Corp. has completed manufacturing the world’s largest rotary drum batch mixer. Continental Rollo-Mixer ® Model No. 132-1286/50s was shipped from Wisconsin at the end of August to the port of Houston. On September 2nd, the ship set sail for Europe and is scheduled to arrive on September 17th. This massive batch mixer rotates at only 2 rpm and will uniformly blend 65,000 lb. batches of friable, cube-like particles in 3 minutes. The rotary drum blender was constructed in 304 Stainless Steel and is equipped with a 100 hp Motor and Variable Frequency Drive. It is intrinsically safe for CE Compliance to meet stringent European Safety Standards. The batch mixer is over 19' long, 16' wide, and weighs 52,000 Lbs. Effective batch mixing volume is 1,286 cu. ft.

Slideshow: Shipping the Rollo-Mixer ® Batch Mixer

Continental Products is currently building the World’s Largest Rotary Drum Mixer. This new 1,286 cu ft capacity Rollo-Mixer ® Mark VII will blend 65,000 lb batches for a major chemical company in Europe. Products are uniformly blended in 2-3 minutes with a drum speed of only 2 rpm. The gentle, distributive mix action creates over 25 divisions per revolution. The Rollo-Mixer ® is designed to cleanout 100% of the batch. It will be finished in July of 2007.

Demonstration video clips
Florida
Kentucky

Demonstration Slideshow

Continental Products began field demonstrations of the Continental Rollo-Mixer ® in February of 2004. To date, Continental has conducted over 145 demonstrations around the country with a 5 cu ft. Rollo-Mixer ® in the van. This allows potential customers to witness first hand, the Rollo-Mixer ®’s® unique mixing and coating technology at their facility.

See it for yourself: request a demonstration at your facility.

Continental Products Corp. has exhibited at the Powder Bulk Solids Show for over 20 years. At the 2006 PBS Show, Continental introduced the new Rollo-Mixer ® MK. VII. On display around their booth, were over 400 samples of different customer’s products which were mixed or coated using the Rollo-Mixer ®.

Slideshow

Continental Products Corp. was invited to the 2005 International Briquetting and Agglomeration Conference held at the Hilton Resort in Clearwater Beach, Florida.

Continental demonstrated the Rollo-Mixer ® at the vendor’s night reception on the beach.

Demonstration on the beach

Bill Callaghan was the recipient of the 2005 Neil Rice Award for his paper (pdf) and presentation (watch video) on “Exploring the Versatility of Free-Fall Processing”.

More information is available at the IBA website.

SYLACAUGA, Ala. (April 26, 2004)-Continental Products Corp. (CPC) of Milwaukee, Wis. donated a Mark VII "Rollo-Mixer" to be used for research purposes in Pursell Technologies Inc. pilot plant located on Edwards Street. Tom Callaghan, operations manager of CPC, drove the 6,000 pound machine from Milwaukee to Sylacauga to personally present the equipment to James T. Pursell, chairman of the board, and David Pursell, chief executive officer, of Pursell Technologies. Other Pursell Technologies representatives, including Arnold Cleghorn, chief operating officer, Dr. Gary Hargrove, director of research and development, and Fred Carney, director of quality assurance, were also in attendance to greet Callaghan.

CPC is owned and operated by the Callaghan family of Milwaukee. The company and family have enjoyed a long standing relationship with family owned Pursell Technologies since 1987.

"Pursell Technologies is a progressive company continually experimenting with and developing new products," said Bill Callaghan, director of engineering for CPC. "We, as a family and business, are proud to help further this innovative corporation through our own products."

Pursell Technologies is most appreciative of the collaboration and business relationship between the Callaghan and the Pursell families and look forward to working together in the future," said David Pursell.

Based in Sylacauga, Ala., Pursell Technologies is the world's premier developer and manufacturer of controlled release fertilizers and has been "spreading it" with the best of them since 1904. The company's patented POLYON® polymer-coated fertilizers and TriKote polymer-coated, sulfur-coated fertilizers are marketed globally to a growing number of turf and horticulture professionals.

About Continental Products Corp. (CPC) Head quartered in Milwaukee, Wis., CPC manufactures advanced Mixing, Blending and Coating Technology for a wide variety of markets throughout the world. D. Coyne and Martha Callaghan founded the company in 1960. They continue to serve as President and Treasurer respectively, and four of their eleven children work in the business.