Paris Food Equipment Show Awards Prizes for Innovation
Internationale des Procédés et Equipements pour l'Industrie Alimentaire (IPA), the giant food equipment exhibition held in Paris in October, covered three shows representing food processing machinery (GIA); meat equipment (Matic); and dairy (SIEL). In its third year, the IPA Challenge Awards for Innovation were given, divided into two categories: Prototypes; and Processes and Equipment. The awards ran across all three related disciplines.
The nominees for the Prototype challenge were:
• Dixie Union France for its pre-slicing crispness process for cooked products. High speed slicing requires perfect control of product temperature. This crisping process provides the necessary control by soaking the product in a container filled with an ethanol-based liquid cooled to -25° C. The process is applied before slicing. It also decontaminates the surface area. The process is cost-effective when compared to crisping using neutral gases.
• Imeca - Della-Toffola France for its ECCF process - evaporative condensation treatment by fractional distillation. This is a new concept combining a series of traditional processes (fermentation, distillation and evaporative condensation). The process is applied to wastes that contain sugar or alcohol. The aim is not only to reduce pollutants but to recycle most of the waste.
• Pi-Vac-Socacel Partner for Pack-Man fresh meat packaging system. This system uses an air permeable elastic plastic film. The packaging machine stretches the film when it is pressed into the mould. The film exerts a constant pressure on the meat throughout the storage period, so vacuum packing is not necessary. The principal benefits are elegant sealing, reduced juice flows from the meat and improved smell, taste and color.
• Sommetrade SL for its sealing arm and roller RX sealing system for metal cans. This system for manual, semi- and fully automatic can sealers provides easy adjustment and maintenance, better hygiene and productivity.
• Tecni-Process Vicarb Partner for its electric plate pasteurizer. This is a one-piece vertical pasteurizer which incorporates a heat exchanger to integrate the heating and cooling functions. This makes the machine completely self-contained and eliminates the need for hot and cold water. An attractive feature is the ease of installation.
The Winner: Techni-process Vicarb's electric plate pasteurizer.
Professor Bernard Guerin, scientific advisor to the Ministry of Agriculture and Fishers Food Division, and president of the Awards Jury, said that the pasteurizer stood out because it needed only an electrical supply to operate. It incorporated heating and cooling functions without requiring hot or cold water. It was simple to use and ideally suited to countries where there were problems with water supply.
Nominees for the process and equipment challenge were:
• Actini SA for the Actini-Cuisson continuous cooking pasteurization process for `complex food products' (high viscosity, multi-phase). It has zero thermal inertia and can be precisely regulated and offers a large increase in production capacity compared with conventional non-continuous cooking systems.
• Arbor Technologies for its continuous salting, drying and smoking process for meat products. Conceived in collaboration with Ifremer and Cirad, this process combines dehydration and impregnation technologies, spraying the product with a solution of water, salt and sugar. Smoking is continuous and achieved by rapidly passing single layers of product through an electrostatic tunnel in which natural smoke is injected. The process offers reduced treatment time, continuous production and excellent quality.
• Biomerieux for its Vidas machine, an immuno-concentration method for rapid microbiological analysis. The method is rapid, specific, economical, and improves laboratory productivity. The entire operation takes only 40 min.
• FL Concept for the Capper Concept, a self-contained sandwich filling machine with digital controls. It is extremely responsive to changes in shape and filling and can fill 125 sandwiches/minute.
• Sairem for its 50+ high frequency tunnel for thawing poultry blocks from an initial temperature of -20° C to a final temperature of 0/+3° C. Processing time is between 50-60 min. It can reach temperatures of above -4/-3° C without the problem of localized cooking within the blocks.
The winner: Sairem's 50+ high frequency thawing tunnel for poultry blocks.
Professor Guerin said Sairem had come up with a system that solved the problem of thawing whole blocks of poultry. The use of 50 ohmes impedance high frequencies produced homogenous rises in product temperature up to 0° C/+3° C. Thirty years after the launch of microwaves, high frequency technology was making its debut in the food sector where it would see rapid growth.