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

Radar
Physical Retail’s Next Infrastructure Layer: Item-Level Intelligence with Radar
June 4, 2026

Physical retail is under pressure to become as measurable and responsive as e-commerce. While retailers have spent years optimizing digital channels with real-time data, store teams have often had to make decisions with incomplete inventory visibility and delayed operational signals. That gap matters because stores still account for 80% of U.S. retail sales, making…

Read More
Healthcare in Pakistan
From Institutional Excellence to Population-Level Access: How Pakistan Can Bridge Its Healthcare Divide
June 1, 2026

Healthcare systems are under pressure almost everywhere, but the strain is especially visible in lower-resource settings where demand is rising faster than infrastructure. In Pakistan, that pressure is playing out across a system that has to serve more than 250 million people with limited public investment. Public health spending remains below 1% of GDP,…

Read More
Engineering
Scaling Experiential Learning in the Curriculum: How Iron Range Engineering Transformed Engineering Education
June 1, 2026

Engineering has transformed nearly every part of modern life, from the phones in our pockets to the systems powering global industry. But the way engineers are educated has often moved far more slowly than the profession itself. Employers are asking for graduates who can navigate ambiguity, communicate across teams, and contribute meaningfully from the…

Read More
vascular surgeon
When Geography Meets Purpose: How One Move Reshaped a Vascular Surgeon’s Career
May 28, 2026

Medicine isn’t what it used to be—not for the people practicing it. Independent physicians are becoming the exception, not the norm, as more doctors move into hospital systems, corporate groups, and academic networks. At the same time, the pipeline of specialists isn’t keeping pace with growing patient needs, particularly in complex fields like vascular…

Read More