Founder and md David Lambert, a mechanical engineer by training, told FoodManufacture.co.uk that CRL had developed a patented ‘continuous retort’ process.
This will enable flexible pouch and semi-rigid plastic tray packaged food for microwave use to be continuously sterilised or pasteurised, rather than batch treated.
CRL claims that its technology will allow foods to be produced in such packaging – which are growing in popularity – at similar or lower unit costs than canned food, with up to 1,200 packs being processed per minute through a single machine using around 50% less energy.
The company said that its machine will occupy only a quarter of the factory floor space, compared with the same output via batch retort equipment. No comparable breakthrough has been made by anyone else within the market, according to the firm.
Serious industry interest
CRL maintains that a closed-loop cooling system will also “virtually eliminate” large quantities of water lost via the current batch production process, further reducing production costs, while the machine will also provide significant energy savings.
Lambert said that the problem with the traditional process had always been that it was "ridiculously slow", and also meant high energy and water (coolant) costs.
CRL has invested £1m in the technology, and has now developed a full-scale development rig, he added. Large food firms in both Europe and the US were seriously interested, and CRL plans to ship its first machine next year.
Lambert explained that the current batch-treatment approach, whereby large food firms push five or six baskets/cages (of around 1m3) containing products into a tube and then insert them into what is, in effect, a giant pressure cooker, was both inefficient and slow.
The process took around two hours, he said, and had other disadvantages. “Basically, you’re heating up around 15 tonnes of stainless steel and product, and then throwing away all that energy and water."
Genuinely game changing?
CRL’s system is closed-loop, Lambert said, meaning that water can be reused, while heat pumps recover energy. He claimed that the system provided four times the product output of an equivalent batch system, with only 1/10th of the environmental footprint.
Finance for Business North East Technology Fund spokesman Nick Cloke described CRL’s system as “genuinely game-changing” provided commercialisation went smoothly.
He told FoodManufacture.co.uk: “There are a number of companies that are interested in speaking to the firm and working with it, and we’re hopeful that this will crystallise into something concrete in a matter or weeks and months, rather than years."
Cloke said that CRL was using the fund’s investment to achieve further technical milestones and full commercialisation of the technology.