High Pressure Processing (HPP) from JBT Avure is a technology that delivers significant product advantages for food and beverage processors, especially in shelf-life extension, food safety and the retention of flavor and nutrient content during pasteurization. But what are the top trends shaping its development industry-wide?
Lisa Wessels, Marketing Director-HPP at JBT Avure Technologies, here outlines the HPP trends worth watching and explains how the system is benefiting processors.
When we talk about trends in HPP, there are four key trends that have really grown in importance over the last 12 months as more and more food and beverage processors become aware of the technology’s significant capacity for retaining flavor and nutrients, extending shelf-life and guaranteeing food safety.
These four key trends – babyfood, seafood, petfood and sustainability – might appear distinct from each other, but common threads run through all of them. Ensuring food safety is undoubtedly vital, but extending shelf-life also a major concern. HPP allows processors to achieve both goals, while also maintaining vitamins, nutrients and minerals that are typically lost during heat treatment.
At the same time, the recent introduction of the Avure FlexiBulk enables processors to become more sustainable by delivering effective pasteurization for recyclable packable such as glass or aluminum, allowing companies to move away from single-use plastics.
When it comes to petfood, the primary objective for processors is food safety: not for the pets, but rather for the humans handling the food. This makes it interesting and unique in terms of HPP.
While most pets can handle a raw diet, such products carry the risk of pathogens, which – while unlikely to affect the majority of pets – can have an adverse affect on any owner handling them.
HPP is now being used extensively in the petfood industry to inactivate pathogens to keep both humans and pets safe from dangerous cross-contamination. Not only this, HPP also extends refrigerated shelf-life and preserves flavor, texture and nutrients.
With babyfood, safety is of course paramount, but HPP comes with the advantage that parents are guaranteed a 100% clean-label product for their baby.
Traditional babyfood in glass jars is heat-pasteurized, meaning it has already lost most of its vitamins, minerals and nutrients by the time it reaches grocery store shelves, while preservatives are also likely to have been added during this process.
HPP-treated babyfood, offers processors the option of being able to provide an all-natural product in a completely clean label. HPP treatment will also extend the shelf-life of fruit-based babyfood by up to 120 days, compared with just three-four days for non-HPP products.
Seafood is a relatively recent application, but one which is fast gaining traction among processors. In the case of seafood, HPP has a slightly different application in that it is primarily used to achieve 100% separation of the meat – whether that be lobster, mussels, oysters or clams – from the shell. So effective is HPP in doing this that processors can reel in 125% or more yield using more than fives times the pressure of the deepest ocean.
Importantly for seafood, HPP also locks out disease by deactivating dangerous pathogens such as listeria and salmonella, and vibrio in oysters, during pasteurization.
But how can sustainability be the fourth most-important trend? Well, when it comes to sustainability, there are more and more laws coming into effect all over the world designed to reduce or eradicate the use of single-use plastic containers.
Avure’s recently-launched Flexibulk gives processors the ability to remove single-use plastics from their packaging options by offering a breakthrough in HPP solutions. The FlexiBulk enables tollers to improve their sustainability record by allowing the HPP pasteurization of glass, cartons, aluminum cans and other materials not previously suitable for HPP treatment. In the process, the FlexiBulk helps minimize plastic waste that would otherwise be produced.
These are just a few of the reasons why Avure HPP is a winning option for any food and beverage processors. Get in touch to find out more.