Prebreakers, Presizers and AMR Efficiency
How Upstream Reduction Can Improve Your Line’s Performance
January 9, 2025
When we’re serving a customer in the field, and their advanced meat recovery (AMR) is seeing issues like inconsistent yield, jams and bottlenecks, or excessive wear on the food-separation equipment, the culprit is often not at the point of attack, so to speak.
It’s up the line, where preparation of the material being fed into the separator isn’t being optimized.
If you’re running without a prebreaker or a presizer, or don’t have the right combination of these machines prescribed to match your AMR performance specs and system capacity, you might be experiencing similar problems.
The Power of ‘Pre’
In today’s competitive meat processing industry, when high output and QA are more critical than ever, two pieces of equipment are proving invaluable.
They are similar in their function (both reduce material size), but they operate at different stages of the process, have different design principles, and contribute differently to yield, throughput, and overall efficiency.
Understanding the distinction, and how each adds value, is important to maximize the results of your AMR process.
The Prebreaker: Your Heavy-Duty Workhorse
Operating with low-speed, high-torque power, prebreakers do exactly what the name implies.
They crush and reduce raw, bulk-material items (bones, ribs, neck bones, frozen blocks of meat, etc.), breaking them down into more manageable chunks.
The output pieces typically fall within a wide particle-size range—often between 25–75 mm, depending on machine settings and configuration.
Prebreakers are installed as the first stage in an AMR line, immediately after bins or raw-material input, and upstream of separators and other rendering units.
The Presizer: Separation’s ‘Setup Man’
Presizers take pre-broken bone or reduced carcass material and size it consistently to a format optimized for separation.
Using hydraulic or fully electric power, presizers force the bone pieces (or other hard material) through a grid or plate, effectively reducing the material in size but, more importantly, standardizing it for a uniform, efficient feed into the separator.
Many presizers are designed to perform using relatively few moving parts, optimizing hygiene and reducing the need for maintenance.
What This Tandem Brings to the Table
In a high-performing AMR system, prebreakers and presizers are much like the offensive linemen on a football team.
They seldom get much spotlight praise, but they’re crucial role players for a number of reasons.
Improved Yield Recovery: Because the material they produce is more consistently sized and manageable, the separator can more effectively recover residual meat from bones and offal, reducing waste and maximizing usable product.
Increased Throughput and Productivity: The presizer’s standardized output maintains a smooth, steady material flow into the separator, reducing bottlenecks and feed fluctuations.
We’ve had customers report throughput increases (even as high as 20%) that they can attribute to installing a presizer ahead of their separation component.
Reduced Maintenance & Downtime Risk: Prebreakers are built to handle heavy loads and potential contaminants (like metal), minimizing blade damage or shaft issues.
The presizer, with minimal moving parts, is easier to clean and maintain, contributing to long-term reliability.
Improved Downstream Process Efficiency: Uniform particle size from the presizer means more predictable separation performance, including better rendering yields, consistent batch-to-batch results, and less variation in downstream processing or product quality.
So, What Does Your AMR Line Need?
As valuable as prebreakers and presizers are, not every application calls for their addition.
For example, consider your material type and input volume.
If you routinely handle large bones, rib sections, offal, or bulk by-products, a large prebreaker is nearly indispensable as a first-stage solution.
However, for lower volumes or already partially cut material, you might be able to skip the prebreaker stage.
What about your downstream goals?
If your aim is high-yield mechanical separation (meat recovery from bone), coupling a presizer with a separator to standardize the feed is a must to maximize yield.
But, if your line is meant for simpler rendering—say, meal or fat extraction—the prebreaker may suffice, depending on your rendering rate and particle-size requirements.
Obviously, because maximizing ROI is always an objective, it’s important to know that your entire system—prebreaker > presizer > separator/rendering—should be sized and balanced relative to your typical throughput and processing volume.
Over-investing (in, say, a large prebreaker with inadequate downstream capacity) may waste power and maintenance costs, while under-investing could fail to resolve bottlenecks.
Or, worse, it might even cause them.
Get More AMR Insight
Contact B&D Resources, a specialized team with years of hands-on, production-floor experience installing and servicing AMR systems, and let’s talk about how we can maximize your AMR productivity and profitability.
303.218.3707