FAM Stumabo are specialists in the design and manufacturing of industrial food cutting equipment and precision blades. Their goal? To assist potato processors in producing the best potato cuts possible. This article zooms in on some of the challenges and solutions for cutting potatoes into fries.

Understanding Changing Climate and Potatoes

Numerous factors affect how well potatoes are cut. Understanding your produce is the first step. A few factors that are critical to cutting potatoes perfectly are the potato variety, size, shape, solid content, fresh vs stored, skin-on or skin-off, steam-, abrasive- or knife peeling processes.

Climate change causes growth conditions and potato characteristics to fluctuate and vary more, which puts pressure on productivity and yield. The perfect French fry from an uncertain and often imperfect potato depends on the use of cutting-edge processing and manufacturing equipment.

FAM Stumabo takes great pride in knowing the difficulties and complexity involved in chopping potatoes. They can provide industry-leading innovation when it comes to potato cutting in any cut form, size, and capacity. All because of their product expertise, internal design, and manufacturing of mechanical cutters, cutting tools, hydrocutter heads, and precision blades.

Potato Strip Cutting

There are essentially two ways of making fries. The high-volume processing of potatoes into French fries is typically done with a hydrocutter system, using water to feed potatoes at high velocity through a set of blades in a hydrocutting head. This method is generally used to make straight fries, but other cuts are possible. Medium and low volume processing, as well as specialty cuts, even in high volume, such as crinkle fries and dices, are the best cut in mechanical drum dicer.

Hydrocutting Potato Processing

The hydrocutting heads and precision blades from FAM Stumabo are the ideal choices for high-volume French fries processing. They produce a very clean cut with optimized length and high efficiency. Due to the hydrocutting heads’ exceptional flexibility, a wide range of cut sizes and shapes are possible, including wedges, flat and crinkle slices, square cuts, rectangular cuts, and more. Additional specialty cuts like the beefeater, deep crinkle wedges, and crinkle steak are added on top of this.

The Stumabo hydrocutting heads and blades can be integrated into all known (hydrocutting) installations. The main challenge is to maintain a sharp blade that is cutting and not tearing apart the potato. Stumabo offers the possibility of a semi-automated machine to improve this process, the Handygrind.

Mechanical Processing

The FAM Tridis™ and FAM Dorphy™ mechanical dicers are FAM Stumabo’s best-selling products for low to medium processing as well as specialty-cut French fries, even in high volumes.

The newest model in the Tridis™ 180P potato dicer line is highly technologically advanced. The Tridis™ 180P now enables medium-capacity potato processors to attain the same reliability and highest cut quality. It is based on its larger, ultra-high capacity Tridis™ 240P sister and meets every requirement of any modern potato processor.

Tridis™ quickly established itself in the potato market after its inception and is now used by significant potato processors all over the world. For a comprehensive range of premium flat, crinkle, deep crinkle fries, dices, and slices, customers rely on Tridis™ technology. The Set & Forget features allow for cutting tools to be replaced and adjusted effortlessly. There is no need for specially trained operators.

Dorphy™ is FAM’s entry-level dicer and French fry cutter, perfectly suited for and accepted by many smaller volume processors that need good quality from user-friendly potato dicer.

All of the cutting solutions from FAM Stumabo are created to be simple to integrate into both new and existing lines from all major equipment manufacturers. They are becoming more adept at interacting upstream and downstream.

Innovation Comes First

Innovation is the inevitable result of specialists, combining their passion with years of expertise and problem-solving. FAM Stumabo has built profound customer relationships over many years; these resulted in new applications and products related to either cutting technology or the shape of the final product. Many new frozen processed potato products have also been the result of close collaboration between manufacturers and customers. That’s why FAM Stumabo is always on the search to find the most appropriate solution for their customers, quite often tailored to their specific needs.