Vakuum Food Uses PEF Process in Close Cooperation with Elea
The Vakuum Food GmbH & Co.KG’s “Snacks-TEAM” new brand set about producing high-quality snacks conventionally, and in organic quality, using a combination of high-performance vacuum and PEF technology.
In early 2020, The Vakuum Food GmbH & Co.KG’s founder, Martin Johanning, participated in Elea’s very first online ‘PEF-inar’ about the benefits of Pulsed Electric Fields (PEF) technology for chips and dried fruits.
“During the webinar, Elea’s managing director Stefan Toepfl, and its scientific engineer Kevin Hill showed how PEF works for potatoes and performed a live demonstration with the Elea PEF Advantage B 1 system. The Elea Belt systems improve product quality and yield while reducing processing costs. Raw materials treated with PEF are easier to cut or slice and show less breakage. PEF application allows the shortening of frying time and temperature and reduces undesired quality changes,” according to a recent press release.
For Vakuum Food, said Elea’s experts, it was of particular interest to be able to produce a vegetable chip that has a natural color and a low fat and acrylamide level which was not available in Germany at that time.
“Especially for vegetable chips, this is a crucial aspect, as the raw material has a high content of reducing sugars, which are considered precursors of acrylamide,” Elea’s specialists added.
Reducing Sugars Can be Washed Out
With the PEF-induced pore formation called electroporation, reducing sugars can be washed out easier before frying. PEF in combination with an adapted frying process, using a lower frying temperature and reduction in frying time, results in a product with better color and lower fat and acrylamide content at the same moisture content and crispiness.
A combination of the two technologies should lead to promising results, and trials have started with an Elea PEF Pilot machine in the production facility of Vakuum Food. […]
Thanks to these positive results, Martin Johanning decided to invest in the PEF technology and an Elea PEF Advantage B 1 mini system has been installed. With the support of Elea’s engineers, technical requirements were clarified, and the correct parameters were set.
The compact all-in-one design of the B 1 mini model allows easy line integration, quick start-up and was specially designed for smaller production lines with a capacity of up to 3 t/h. With PEF, Vakuum Food benefits from increased product yield and low energy usage, and many new product development opportunities.
“Without PEF, several products in our range would not even exist. In this respect, the process has proven to be an indispensable stage within our production process,” Martin Johanning said.
Vakuum Food GmbH & Co.KG is a snacks producer based in Neuenkirchen near Osnabrück and was founded by Martin Johanning in 2018.
