Hop Kiln

This complete hop processing facility was designed, constructed, and commissioned on a greenfield site in Tasmania within a five month period, completed only just before harvest time. The first building houses “picking” machines and continuous band dryers. Dry hops are transferred to the second building, discharged onto conditioning floors, for cooling, and baling.

Numerous conveyors receive hops from the farm trailers and transfer them at each stage between and within the buildings. A novel feature was the inclined, two speed reversible conveyor for spreading the hops on the conditioning floor. The conveyor oscillates continuously advancing at high speed, retracting at low speed thereby spreading the hops uniformly across the bed.

A challenging project but, as beer drinkers will appreciate, well worth the long hours of effort to ensure continuity of supply of essential ingredients to this important industry.