Aviko Belgium announced it bought the 30th Kiremko Strata Invicta steam peeler, making it the company’s 30th product sold to customers in the last 30 months.

“We are proud to announce that we have sold 30 of the best steam peelers on the market in just over 30 months. Made in Europe and the US, supplied globally. This is why,” Kiremko announced.

As Aviko Belgium Project Manager, Cor Koole, admits, at the time of the acquisition, they had no idea that the product has an assembly line celebration.

“We didn’t know of this anniversary of the Kiremko Strata Invicta steam peeler at the moment we bought it. We just bought it because it offers us the highest reliability. We know the Kiremko Strata Invicta from other Aviko locations. Yield, capacity, operational reliability, and total cost of ownership were our main focus. As always – with new major projects, like Poperinge – we had a good look at what the market has to offer and again Kiremko came out as the best. It’s always nice when your choice is acknowledged by others. That is how we see the celebration of the 30th Kiremko Strata Invicta they sold to us. And we congratulate them on this impressive milestone,” Koole mentioned.

Artificial Intelligent Operator Systems

To optimize the efficiency of the Strata Invicta steam peeler Kiremko designed the PeelGuard.

“The PeelGuard is an optical in-line inspection, equipped with a weigh belt, so the exact peel result can be calculated accurately,” Andy Gowing, director of Kiremko mentioned.

Optimized Peeling

The system detects the thickness of the removed skin and cooking ring, to continuously optimize the steam peeler settings. This way, the PeelGuard guarantees a constantly optimized peeling yield and up-to-date information concerning the quality of raw material used. This information can be made available to the customer’s MES and/or ERP systems.

For Kiremko steam peeling is one of the major potato processing steps where their innovation efforts and product development is directed to. This has been the case for many years.

Steam peeling emerged in the late 1960s as a replacement for lye peeling and abrasive peeling. This was better for the environment and with steam peeling the peel residue could be used as high-quality cattle feed, as opposed to lye peeling.

Developing the steam peeling process has been a Dutch affair in which Kiremko was, and still is, one of the most important players. More than 20 years ago the first steam peeler was built in the US, by
Idaho Steel. Nowadays Idaho Steel supplies America and Kiremko to the rest of the world.