Major Poultry Processing Manufacturer Gains Additional Shelf Life With Modified Atmosphere Packaging (MAP)

Hellenic Quality Foods (HQF) is a leading food company in Greece, packaged its products on trays with stretch film until early 2014. This case study shows how the company made the move to Modified Atmosphere Packaging (MAP) to improve its products shelf and extend its customer reach.

Hellenic Quality Foods (HQF) is a leading food company in Greece. Its subsidiary Mimikos, based in Evia, around 100 km from Athens, is one of Greece’s major poultry processing companies: around ten million chickens each year are processed and packaged as fresh whole birds and cuts, together with a range of cooked products such as nuggets and burgers. Mimikos employs some 400 people, and the Evia factory has eight packaging lines.

Improving Shelf Life 
Until early 2014, the products were packaged on trays with plain stretch film. For some years the company had been considering a switch to Modified Atmosphere Packaging (MAP) with a view to improving the products’ shelf life and extending the customer reach.

A decision was eventually taken to move to a flow packaging system with MAP, and this was followed by more than a year of intensive research to identify the systems that would work best for the Mimikos product range: the type of flow packaging lines needed, the gas mixtures and mixing systems, packaging materials, and quality assurance methods.