Starting a Liquid Egg Plant: Capacity, Yield and the First Equipment List
Published · 2 min read
Work back from your egg supply, not forward from a machine rating. How to size a first liquid egg line and which stages buyers most often forget.
The most expensive mistake on a first liquid egg line is buying more capacity than the egg supply supports. A breaker running half-empty raises the cost of every egg it processes. Start from what you can actually source.
Step 1: work back from eggs per day
Divide the eggs you can reliably source per day by the hours you plan to run, then add a margin for stoppages and changeovers — around 15% is a reasonable starting point. If you can source 80,000 eggs a day and run one eight-hour shift, you need roughly 10,000 eggs per hour plus margin. That points to a 4-row breaker (11,000 eggs/h), not a 6-row (16,000 eggs/h).
Step 2: decide your products
Whole liquid egg is the simplest product. Separated white and yolk sell at higher value to bakeries and confectioners, but egg white must have very little yolk in it or it will not whip. A chain breaker with separate outlets can produce both, so you can start with whole egg and add separated products later.
Step 3: do not skip the stages before breaking
- Washing and drying — a wet shell carries contamination through the crack
- Candling — removes cracked and defective eggs cheaply
- Grading — keeps eggs inside the size range the breaker is adjusted for, protecting yield
Grading is the stage most often left out of a first equipment list, and one of the cheapest ways to protect yield.
Step 4: buffer, then pasteurise
A breaker delivers liquid in surges; a pasteuriser needs constant flow to give a consistent hold time. A buffer tank between them is required. Liquid egg is pasteurised at much lower temperatures than milk because egg protein coagulates earlier — on our systems, egg white at 56–57 °C, whole egg at 60 °C and yolk at 60–61 °C, each held for 3.5 minutes. A milk pasteuriser cannot simply be reused.
Step 5: chilled storage and CIP
Pasteurised product goes to agitated, chilled storage until packing. Egg residue is a fast-growing contamination source, so the CIP system and cleaning frequency matter more than on most lines — and the egg CIP should be separate from any dairy circuit.
A first equipment list
- Egg washing line with drying and candling
- Egg grading machine
- Chain-type egg breaking machine
- Buffer tank and transfer pump
- Liquid egg pasteuriser
- Chilled storage tank
- CIP system
- Filling (bag-in-box, bucket or bottle)
Use our egg line calculator to estimate the capacity you need, or send us your daily egg supply and shift pattern and we will propose the line.