Vaughan's find seed of success

The consistency of seed coating strongly influences the efficiencies of production and profitability over the entire production process from seed processing to greenhouse to distributor to customer. Vaughan's Seed Co. (Chicago, Illinois.), which offers garden and flower seeds to nurseries and growers within the United States, chose to use peristaltic pumps because of their ability to pump viscous and thin fluids, solids, shear sensitive materials.

Conventional gear, diaphragm, or screw pumps often exhibit inconsistent flow, back flow, and clogging which result in seed-to-seed variance in colour, weight, size, coating thickness, and pellet size - all of which diminish the value of the product.

Vaughan Seed's use of Watson-Marlow pumps solved many of the problems, and the cleanup between processes was simpler since the only maintenance required is a few minutes to replace inexpensive tubing.