Mention Finland and people think of frozen Arctic forests, not sun-ripened produce. But Apetit, a division of the Lannen Tehtaat Food Group, is in the business of sun-ripened frozen produce, with a hearty export trade to places like sunny Italy.
Apetit's headquarters is at Sakyla, just outside Turku in the heart of Finland's richest farmland. The company specialises in a broad range of IQF produce, from peas and parsnips to cauliflower florets and carrots, both sliced and diced.
Other products include a variety of root vegetables, courgette, rhubarb and boiled potatoes. Apetit takes advantage of an uncommonly favourable combination of rich soil, extended sunshine and high-tech processing facilities. “Finland isn't just dark winters,“ said Petri Pyssalo, technical manager at Apetit. “In the summer it's just the opposite, and our midnight sun makes produce as sweet and good as it gets!“
Capturing quality
The trick is to catch this quality in a way that will make consumers sit up and take notice. In addition to a full-service laboratory for product development and quality control, since 1974 Apetit has been using FLoFREEZE@ IQF freezers from Frigoscandia Equipment.
Finnish consumers have taken notice, and Apetit has become one of Finland's most successful brands. Moreover, as the company's market has expanded beyond the country's borders, production capacity has had to keep pace.
To meet the demand for the 1997 harvest, Apetit went for a new, high-capacity production line, and again turned to Frigoscandia.
Apetit asked for a freezer that could run for 22hours a day in three shifts; a hygienic freezer that would be easy to clean thoroughly; and a freezer that could turn out seven tons of high-quality IQF peas an hour.
“Finnish summers are intense, but short,“ explained Pyssalo. “Once the produce is ripe, it's got to be harvested, and then there's no waiting if you want to maintain quality.“
New generation
The solution was a new generation FLoFREEZE-M IQF freezer that met and surpassed Apetit's demands. Since thorough cleaning takes only an hour and a half, a 22- hour run is no problem. Capacity? Up to 7.5tons an hour, if necessary. Quality? “We get true IQF no clumping even with our trickiest products, such as boiled carrot and potato strips,“ Pyssalo said.
With its brief but intense summers, harvest time in Finland is particularly hectic. Peas are just one of many products in line for instant freezing, but each product has its own special properties that must be taken into account in the processing parameters.
How does Frigoscandia Equipment's new FloFREEZE-M measure up?
“We can change from one product to another in minutes,“ observed Pyssalo. “There's a complete production program in the PLC (Programmable Logical Controller) that gives instant, accurate production parameters for any of our products. There's hardly any downtime at all.“
Up-to-the-minute processing information is available at all times on the PLC. In addition, the freezer is equipped with inspection doors that allow in-operation inspection. “It's good to know we can inspect without shutting down,“ Pyssalo concluded “But in fact we've learned that we don't really need a lot of inspections. We've had nothing but good experience from these freezers.“
Concentrating on the processed food, fruit, vegetable and protein segments of the industry, FMC FoodTech helps customers by providing superior technologies and services to the world's largest food processors, suppliers and fast-food chains as well as institutional and commercial restaurants. Its equipment processes approximately 75percent of the citrus juice produced globally and freezes approximately 50percent of the world's frozen foods.
For more information,visit www.fmcfoodtech.com
