How Tubular Drag Conveying Reduces Waste

The manufacturing sector prizes speed for its ability to maximize production. However, when it comes to conveyors, faster doesn’t always mean better. This is especially true for food producers whose conveyor systems may be moving specialty foods like roasted nuts, breakfast cereal, malted barley or delicate cookies or crackers. For food processing facilities and manufacturers seeking to reduce product loss due to degradation, a slow conveying tubular drag system can help achieve a more successful process.

As material is moved through a conveyor, it faces multiple opportunities for degradation due to poor inlet design, product shearing, conveyor speed, temperature changes, friction-induced separation, and sweeps the material needs to pass through on the way to the next process. These threats can negatively impact the quality of the material and contribute to material loss through breakage and waste.

What is a tubular drag conveyor?

Tubular drag conveying systems feature stainless-steel tubes with nylon or UHMW discs attached to a stainless-steel cable, pulled by sprocket drives attached to drive units. Often the cable is coated with plastic for food-grade applications. The cable and disc assembly passes through the tubing, pulling materials from the infeed points to discharge ports. This slow-moving method of conveying, running approximately 100 feet per minute, typically operates on a single electric motor operating at less than 5HP, making it extremely energy efficient, and gentle enough to support a multitude of different products. This gentle conveying aspect prevents breakage of delicate and/or specialty materials that are worth more when they are whole and unbroken.

A smooth, slow-moving conveying system carefully handles materials to minimize degradation and reduce waste, while offering extensive equipment life. With their many advantages over traditional conveying methods, like augers, and bucket elevators, tubular drag conveying systems are quickly becoming popular among food manufacturers and within other industries where the integrity of the material is more critical than speedy output.

Cablevey Conveyors is a leading world-wide tubular drag conveyor manufacturer based in Oskaloosa, Iowa. Our conveyor technology is engineered to be clean, food-safe, highly-efficient, and cost-effective. Reduce Contamination. Minimize Waste. Lower Costs.

Contact Cablevey today by visiting https://cablevey.com/contact/.

Read more at cablevey.com

Follow us on social media for the latest updates in B2B!

Image

Latest

inclusion
Inclusion Beyond Compliance: What It Really Takes to Build Workplace Cultures Where People Feel Seen, Supported, and Free to Belong
December 16, 2025

Inclusion is often reduced to policies and checklists, but its true measure shows up in everyday experiences — in whether people feel seen, supported, and able to contribute without hiding parts of who they are. When organizations move beyond compliance and toward genuine understanding, they open the door to talent, perspective, and potential that…

Read More
healthcare
How Simulation-Based Education Is Transforming Healthcare Leadership and Decision-Making Worldwide
December 16, 2025

As healthcare systems worldwide face rising costs, workforce shortages, and increasing pressure to balance quality with financial sustainability, traditional classroom-based management education is struggling to keep pace. According to the World Economic Forum, healthcare spending now accounts for nearly 10% of global GDP, making leadership decision-making more consequential—and more complex—than ever. At the same…

Read More
work-based learning
Scaling Work-Based Learning in the Curriculum: How Riipen Powers Real Employer Projects at Scale
December 15, 2025

Higher education is facing renewed scrutiny over how well it prepares students for life after graduation. Employers are increasingly signaling that many graduates enter the workforce without real-world, job-ready experience—placing new pressure on higher education to rethink how learning connects to work. Research on high-impact practices consistently shows that experiential and work-based learning boosts…

Read More
private equity
Alts Innovators: UT Austin’s Dr. Ken Wiles on Private Equity
December 15, 2025

Private equity is entering a period of adjustment after decades of expansion fueled by falling interest rates and abundant capital. That long-running tailwind reversed beginning in 2022, when interest rates rose sharply, disrupting deal activity, slowing exits, and bringing renewed attention to a long-standing vulnerability in private markets: liquidity. Industry reports have highlighted softer fundraising,…

Read More