A Cool Idea For The Food Industry

Celsius a temperature measurement system set to bring new levels of accuracy and cost-savings to the food industry is being tested by Northern Foods with Loma Scientific and Glasgow University.

Since the original research and development work on the adaptation of microwave thermometry for the food industry began in 1995, Northern Foods has been working with Loma Scientific and the University of Glasgow to test the new Celsius production model on a range of chilled foods including ready meals, pizzas, pies, cakes and sandwiches.

This extended development process has resulted in the launch of an advanced, user-friendly temperature measurement system set to bring new levels of accuracy and significant cost-savings to the food industry.

Commenting on the new Celsius, Group Technical Manager of Northern Foods Richard Seaby said, "As an organisation, we were concerned about the amount of products we were throwing away after temperature testing.

Our 30 sites across the UK produce hundreds of chilled product lines, so we were spending over 1 million (GBP) each year on thermocouple probes.

Our initial work with the University of Glasgow convinced us that microwave thermometry technology would provide the solution, so we chose Loma to develop a system for the marketplace.

The new Celsius has brought new levels of accuracy to our testing procedures and has now been adopted across nine of our operations where losses were greatest." The new unique temperature-sensing device is designed to accurately sense the temperature of chilled food packs through the use of microwave thermometry.

Microwave thermometry revolutionises the temperature testing of chilled food due to its non-contact and non-destructive nature that eliminates the need for intrusive probes causing product wastage.

Results are recorded electronically and the user-friendly control panel incorporates an easy read display.

Roy Salvidge, Sales Manager at Loma Scientific said, "Alternative technologies have significant margins for error which could result in serious food safety issues.

For example probes are only accurate to plus or minus half a degree Centigrade and only record temperature at the tip.

We have developed Celsius to improve accuracy and food safety levels by testing the average temperature of the product.

It gives readings within five seconds and is accurate to within plus or minus 0.2 of a degree Centigrade.

Customers can also recoup capital outlay within months as the packs are still fully saleable after testing unlike with other methods." As well as improving the quality control process, the new system can also lead to overall energy efficiencies in the production environment.

With strict temperature monitoring capabilities, production managers can guarantee that product is at the correct temperature and can keep chillers at the most energy-efficient levels, without unnecessary wastage.

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