Treating seafood with care

FROZEN SEAFOOD requires careful handling to retain the best possible visual appearance to the consumer as well as the best possible returns for seafood processors.

Delicate fish fillets need sensitive handling, both to maximise yield and to ensure they meet quality standards. Treating seafood with care means processors have more potential to demand premium prices and expand their markets.

The key to success for seafood processors is getting product to market in the right condition. Freeze too slowly, for instance, and these products are damaged. Products could immediately stick to a frozen mesh belt or, if soft and delicate as these are, could sink into the mesh leaving marks.

Freezing technology specialist, JBT FoodTech, is constantly modifying its Frigoscandia range to improve processing capabilities, efficiency and throughput. The company’s latest development, the ADVANTEC? Steel Belt Impingement Freezer, has been designed specifically with seafood processors in mind and forms part of the complete range of Frigoscandia freezing solutions.

The key feature is the solid steel belt, particularly effective for seafood as it prevents product sticking to the belt, allowing it to be placed and moved around the belt easily by hand.

The ADVANTEC Freezer uses patented impingement technology to blast high velocity air jets at products, dispersing the narrowed down to one of the four channels. The contents of that channel can be diverted while the other three carry on, so that the volume of scallops rejected is limited and overall production is not halted.

The IX-GA-4075 incorporates Ishida’s unique genetic algorithm technology, which allows the routine operator, without specialist assistance, to ‘train’ the X-ray inspection system for greater detection sensitivity to specific, known contaminants. It also has integrated product masking and weight estimation functions.

Packopale handles all aspects of seafood packing, including cutting, weighing, bagging and labelling for Norfrigo. It has made considerable investments in plant and machinery in recent years, including an Ishida multihead weigher to prepare seafood cocktail, one of its most widely known products. The 20-head machine takes four separate infeeds (shrimp, scallops, calamari and mussels) and delivers very accurately balanced 500g and 1kg weighments at 40 packs per minute.

Incorporating the IX-GA-4075 high-performance X-ray inspection system into the process means another new level of certainty for their customers, who already have the reassurance of bacteriological monitoring before and after packing.

Gregory Condette, managing director, admits that this previous experience influenced his decision to buy the Ishida IX-GA-4075. “My objective with this X-ray inspection system was to reassure my current customers and to take market share from the competition by offering an additional level of security,” he explains.