Inside Koller's 30-Ton Flake Ice Project in Gabon

Koller’s Gabon project has one feature that makes it different from a conventional high-capacity ice installation: the customer’s 30 tons of daily capacity comes from two machines.

The customer, located in Libreville, was developing a local flake ice supply business for fishermen and seafood companies. Koller supplied two KP150 flake ice machines, each rated at 15 tons per 24 hours.

Together, the installation provides a total rated capacity of 30 tons per day. 

That two-unit arrangement is the defining feature of this project.

Building 30 Tons as Two Production Modules

A specification sheet can make 30 tons/day look like a single number.

The Gabon installation shows what that number looks like in an actual Koller project:

2 × KP150 = 30 tons/day

For this project, we configured the required 30-ton daily capacity with two KP150 flake ice machines, each rated at 15 tons per 24 hours.

This two-unit configuration divides the total installed capacity into two production modules rather than concentrating it in a single machine.

From a plant-planning perspective, this creates a different production structure and gives the customer greater flexibility in organizing daily operation and equipment maintenance.

A multi-unit plant provides a different production structure from putting the entire installed capacity into one machine. Depending on the site’s operating plan, individual production modules can be managed around demand and maintenance requirements.

For engineering contractors and ice-plant investors, this is why Koller does not treat total tonnage as the only project decision.

The number of production units, available utilities, installation area, ice storage, maintenance access and future operating requirements all influence the final plant arrangement.

Supplying Ice Beyond One Business

The Gabon customer was building the project as an ice supplier rather than producing ice only for internal use. Koller’s project record identifies nearby fishermen and seafood businesses as the target users. 

This makes the 30-ton capacity commercially different from the Bahrain KP200 project.

Bahrain uses flake ice to protect one processor’s own seafood flow.

The Libreville plant needs to make ice available to multiple external users.

That means the project has to be considered as an ice-production facility: production, handling and customer supply all become part of the operation.

Koller supplied the two KP150 units to establish the required production base. The project record identifies each machine at 15 tons/24 hours and the combined installation at 30 tons/24 hours. 

At this scale, plant layout becomes increasingly important because ice has to move away from the production equipment efficiently enough for both units to operate as intended.

What This Project Adds to Koller’s Flake Ice Experience

For Koller, the Gabon installation is a useful reference for larger fishery ice projects because it demonstrates a modular approach to capacity.

It does not mean two machines are automatically better than one for every 30-ton requirement.

The correct arrangement depends on the project.

A new ice plant may prioritize initial investment. Another may expect future expansion. Another may have utility or space constraints. A contractor may also need to consider how much installed production can be unavailable during planned maintenance.

Those conditions need to be discussed before equipment configuration is finalized.

In Libreville, the completed solution used two KP150 flake ice machines to create a 30-ton/day production platform for the local fishery market. 

That is the distinctive point of this Koller project.

The customer did not simply buy “30 tons of capacity.”

Koller delivered that capacity as two 15-ton production modules serving one commercial ice operation.