Poultry processing moves through more distinct stages than almost any other food production line, from live bird receiving through to effluent treatment, and each stage places different demands on the equipment that touches it. Tegman supplies across four product ranges that meet those demands: wire conveyor belts, screening and filtration media, food processing machinery for forming and coating, and wastewater treatment equipment.
What Poultry Processing Equipment Needs to Deliver
Every piece of equipment on a poultry line has to deliver on two fronts. Hygiene comes first: lines are washed down repeatedly throughout the day, so equipment has to withstand that cycle without corroding, seizing, or harbouring bacteria in joins and crevices. This is why food-grade stainless steel, usually 304 as standard and 316 where extra corrosion resistance is needed, runs through nearly every product in Tegman’s poultry range.
Throughput and durability matter just as much. A poultry plant runs long shifts at high volume, and equipment that can’t keep pace, or fails under continuous use, costs more in downtime than it saved on price. Features like servo-controlled forming, reinforced wear bands on screening media, and modular construction that lets components be replaced individually all help keep a line running.
1. Live Bird Receiving & Handling
Live bird receiving is a materials handling problem before anything else: birds need to move from arrival to the slaughter line on equipment that can be washed down repeatedly without breaking down.
Tegman’s wire conveyor belts, with an open mesh structure that lets liquid, air and debris pass through rather than pool, are built for this. Belt types such as the Rod Ladder Belt and Balance Weave Mesh Belt, in 304 stainless steel as standard for food processing environments, cover the requirements of this stage.
2. Slaughtering & Evisceration
Slaughter and evisceration add a second requirement alongside conveying: separating solids from process water and offal streams. Tegman’s wire conveyor belts continue the conveying through this stage, in the same food-grade stainless steel belt types used for live bird receiving.
Mud Filter Screens, Centrifuge Basket Segments, Diffuser Plates and combined Perforated Plate, Woven Wire Mesh and Wedge Wire baskets, filters and strainers handle the solids separation. Perforated plates are available in round, square, slotted, hexagonal, oval and diamond apertures, in mild steel or stainless steel (SS304 and SS316), as stock items or custom-made through Tegman’s engineering workshop.
3. Washing & Cleaning
Conveying –Washing carries the same conveying requirement as the stages before it: wire conveyor belts that drain rather than pool water.
Filtration – Where wash water needs screening before recirculation or discharge, both woven wire mesh and wedge wire apply. Woven wire mesh comes in Fine Mesh (1 to 2,000 micron) and Medium Weave Mesh (2,000 to 25,000 micron), in galvanised steel, SS304 or SS316. Wedge wire screens, in apertures from 0.1mm to 15mm and the same stainless grades, cover coarser filtration and can be fabricated into baskets or cylinders.
4. Chilling / Immersion Chilling
Chilling, whether air chilling or immersion chilling, needs equipment that tolerates low temperatures, constant moisture and washdown cleaning. Tegman’s wire conveyor belts cover this: 304 stainless steel for ambient through to blast freezing temperatures, 316 where higher corrosion resistance is needed, typically against acidic products or concentrated cleaning chemicals.
Where immersion chilling uses a recirculated chilled brine or slush ice solution, the same wedge wire and woven wire mesh filtration used in brining and marination applies here too, keeping solids out of the recirculated liquid.
5. Brining & Marination
Brining and marination need solids kept out of the brine or marinade as it’s pumped and reused. Tegman doesn’t supply a dedicated brine filter product, but wedge wire screens, in apertures from 0.1mm to 15mm and SS304, SS316 or SS316L, can be fabricated in-house into custom baskets, cylinders or sieve bends for this kind of separation.Woven wire mesh, in the same stainless steel grades, is a further option where a finer aperture is needed.
6. Cutting, Deboning & Portioning
This stage extends Tegman’s range beyond conveying and screening into dedicated processing equipment. An Intelligent Portion Cutter, Intelligent Horizontal Slicer, Template Slicing Machine, Fresh Slicer, Strip Cutter & Dicer, Intelligent Dicer, Meat Flattener, Meat Tenderizer and Meat Shredder cover the range of cutting, deboning and portioning tasks a poultry line typically needs. Between these stations, wire conveyor belts continue to move product without the drainage or hygiene compromises a solid belt would introduce, with heavier-duty types such as the Eyelink Belt or Plate Belt suited to heavier, portioned product loads.
7. Further Processing
Further processing turns portions into formed, coated and cooked products such as chicken nuggets and crumbed chicken portions, and is where Tegman’s food processing machinery is most directly built for poultry. Wire conveyor belts link every station in this stage.
The Automatic Forming Machine range shapes whole-muscle and minced poultry portions such as chicken fillets and nuggets, while the Automatic Burger Forming Machine and Mini Automatic Hamburger & Nugget Forming and Coating Processing Line combine forming, battering and crumbing in one pass. The Batter Machine, Preduster and Breader (or Drum Breader) apply the batter, flour and crumb layers in sequence, with the Tempura Batter Dipper and Drum Batter machine handling dip-coating instead where needed. The Combined Contact Cooker cooks and browns portions without added fat, and the Tegman Fryer, a modular 4 to 8 metre unit, fries crumbed and tempura-coated portions moving on from breading.
8. Freezing / IQF
Freezing is where several parts of Tegman’s range work together as a system: the Spiral Freezer handles multi-tier IQF freezing in a fully welded, high-hygiene enclosure with symmetrical airflow to limit cold loss and product weight loss; the Cooling Machine and Ice Water Coating Machine prepare product before it reaches the freezer, reducing load and protecting against drying out; and the Spiral Freezer Belt and Spiral Freezer Link Belt, using collapsing side links to flex through turns, carry product through the multi-tier conveyor itself.
9. Rendering
Rendering needs fine solids and fat particles screened out of process liquor before it moves on. Tegman has no product named specifically for rendering, but the wedge wire and woven wire mesh consumables used elsewhere on the line, including Mud Filter Screens, Diffuser Plates and combined Perforated Plate, Mesh and Wedge Wire baskets, filters and strainers, are built for this kind of solids separation and can be fabricated to suit.
10. Wastewater & Effluent Treatment
Tegman’s dedicated Rotary Drum Filter range applies directly to this stage. The Internally-Fed Rotary Drum Filter captures solids inside a rotating wedge wire drum, with removal rates of around 95% for particles larger than 0.75mm, while the Externally-Fed Rotary Drum Filter suits smaller plants. The Channel Rotary Drum Screen and Mechanical Bar Screen handle channel and headworks screening, clearing scum, fibre and larger debris, and Tegman’s perforated plate and woven wire mesh ranges cover static screening chambers and settling stages elsewhere in the process.
11. By-Product & Waste Handling
Wire conveyor belts, along with wedge wire, woven wire mesh and perforated plate consumables, continue to apply here, screening and transporting by-product material in the same way they do earlier in the line, with Tegman’s engineering workshop able to fabricate custom baskets, cylinders and sieve bends where a standard product doesn’t fit.
Planning Equipment Across a Full Poultry Line
Because a poultry plant runs through so many stages in sequence, equipment decisions rarely stay isolated to just one part of the line. Specifying compatible materials and belt types across stages, rather than treating each one separately, cuts the number of spare parts a maintenance team needs to keep on hand. Where a standard product doesn’t fit a specific layout or throughput, Tegman’s engineering workshop fabricates custom baskets, cylinders, sieve bends and screens to the exact specification needed, most often for brining and marination, rendering, and static screening in wastewater treatment.
Get In Touch
Contact your nearest branch to discuss equipment for your poultry processing line, or visit tegman.co.za to view the full product range.
Gauteng Branch and Factory: 067 008 5354
Nelspruit Branch: 068 533 4089
Cape Town Branch: 066 298 9523
Durban Branch and Factory: 031 563 4252 / 072 299 4947 / 065 817 1415
Corporate Head Office: 065 810 2138