Salt... It's What We Do
Maine Salt Company manufactures and packages a wide range of salt and ice melt products. Over the years, we have invested in various pieces of equipment to control and ensure the quality of our products.
Along with products for our own sales channels, Maine Salt copacks for other distributors. This allows distributors to focus on their core competencies and on developing sales, while leaving the details
of salt sourcing and manufacturing to us.
Our newest addition is a salt dryer. Quality bagged ice melt begins with properly dried salt. The road salt brought in to keep your roads clear of ice are fine for that purpose, but generally has too much
moisture to make good bagged product. Too much moisture results in clumpy salt, hardened bags, and creates a lot of hassle and extra work for the person trying to spread it. By drying our salt as it enters
the building, we can ensure our salt is dry and free-flowing.
When salt is mined, it is crushed into crystals of usable size. Salt crystals are not particularly tough, so they keep breaking down into smaller and smaller crystals as they are shipped and handled around
the world. (Normally, salt crystals larger than 1/2" in diameter are screened out at the mine and sent back into the crusher.) By the time we receive our salt, there is a huge variance in crystals sizes
from 1/2" to fine powder. We screen out both the largest crystals and the fine powders to ensure a more uniform size profile and keep our products free-flowing.
As the screened salt is transferred to a storage bin inside our packing facility, nozzles spray on various liquids to treat the salt while paddles thoroughly mix the product to ensure proper coverage.
As part of the packing line there is a mixing blender where dry ingredients can be added in any desired ratio to create the desired end product.
Finally, we have our open mouth bagger and heat sealer. While not as high tech as a form-fill-seal automated line, our equipment and crew can pack out a semi-trailer load of product in just 3 hours.
Our system also offers us greater flexibility in changing from one product to another, and one bag size to another, in only a few minutes. We can pivot on a dime and get a specific order done in short order.