Steriflow launches industry-scale Shaka heat sterilization system

The French company told FoodProductionDaily.com at the IPA 2010 show in Paris this week that its new industry-scale Shaka equipment was the company’s first to reach the market.

The technology involves exposing a batch retort of products to high temperatures inside a cylindrical autoclave while simultaneously subjecting them to 150 shakes per minute.

“Thanks to the shaking motion, the time needed for the sterilization process can be cut by between five and ten times compared to a static retort” a company spokesman said. “This means sterilization times can be reduced from around 66 minutes to 18 minutes.”

The equipment can be used with many canned, flexible packed and bottled food products and is most applicable to soups and sauces, ready meals, spreads and dips, beverages, chopped vegetables and baby foods.

He added that the technology had been developed four years ago but that Steriflow was the first to bring a machine to market that could process industrial-type volumes of product. The autoclave has a diameter of 1300mm with a useful length of 1400mm.

The process also preserves far more of the micronutrients than static heat sterilization processes, said Steriflow.

“Tests on soups, for example, following the Shaka process, show a 40 per cent preservation rate of vitamin C – almost double than occurs in the static process,” said the spokesman. “More than 80 per cent of polyphenols remain after our process compared to around a third in the static method.”

Using the Shaka system also allows processors to add less salt in the soup recipe for an “equivalent aromatic balance”, said the firm. The cooking value is lower for the same FO, which results in a better texture, it claimed.

The technology was invented by UK company Zinetec.