Almost all liquid based food and drink products require some form of high temperature pasteurisation to give them a sufficient shelf life. These high temperatures damage the flavour and quality of the end products ultimately affecting their sell through on supermarket shelves.
However, IMEM’s continuous flow microwave technology, with its precision microwave volumetric heating (MVH) , can give more effective pasteurisation helping to reduce costs, give a better product and increase revenue.
Compared to conventional heat treatments IMEM microwaves offer:
Longer shelf life
By precisely controlling the temperature of the pasteurisation process and applying high strength microwave fields consistently over the whole fluid we are able to guarantee a long shelf life for your product. This can be used to give more flexibility to your downstream logistics or in some cases even facilitate an un-refrigerated supply chain helping to massively reduce costs.
Lower temperatures
Because high strength microwaves are more effective at killing microbes, we can often reduce processing temperatures to help save energy, run a safer process and negate the need for pressurised systems with long retention times. We find these factors especially relevant in today’s industry where continual process improvement is a necessity to stay ahead of the competition.
Better taste
By processing at lower temperatures we are able to prevent unnecessary thermal damage to the food or drink. This gives us a better tasting end product. Indeed from all our taste tests, comparing thermal pasteurisation to IMEM, the customer consistently prefers our product every time. This could be used to improve an existing product or launch a new, better tasting, premium line.
Our technology can work to pasteurise many different types of products
Soups & Sauces
For soups and sauces IMEM gives a better tasting and more consistent product without the need for large mixed vessels that are typical for the industry. All our pasteurisation is done inline and can be done at the filling point helping to reduce product wastage.
Fruit Juices
IMEM has helped deliver all kinds of better tasting juice for the premium market. Typically we process fruit juices at 75°C giving equivalent shelf to normal methods processing at much higher temperatures. This helps preserve the flavour and has led to the creation of new premium product lines.
Food Slurries
Most food slurries can’t be processed continuously as their particles can easily clog up normal heat exchangers. Our technology works even with streams with the largest food particles. So long as the fluid is pumpable we can pasteurise it effectively.
To find out more about our how our technology could help your process contact us: