Prepared and catered foods are ideally suited to cryogenic freezing and cooling using liquid nitrogen and carbon dioxide.
At Linde, we have worked hard over the past few years to improve the efficiency and hygiene of our freezing equipment. We focus in particular on minimizing contamination risks and reducing operation and maintenance costs.
Linde provides equipment and service offerings to maximize yield, improve product quality, increase production capacities, decrease variability and extend shelf life of various products.
The main benefits of this proven technology are:
Fast in-line freezing and cooling, thus preserving flavor
Formation of smaller ice crystals, resulting in less drip loss and higher quality of the frozen product
Low investment costs
Flexible design for multi-purpose deployment
Low maintenance effort and downtime
Cryogenic technology comes into its own for prepared and catered foods. Many products in this food category, Individually Quick-Frozen (IQF) items in particular, need to be frozen quickly after cooking to maintain quality and reduce the risk of contamination. This technology is extremely popular for ready-made meals, pizzas, battered and fried products as well as coated products.
Typically used freezers include impingement freezers, spiral freezers, tunnel freezers, batch freezers, and immersion freezers.