Industrial pasteurization of jams and marmalades

Customer jam pasteurization needs

Pasteurization is a key step in the production of industrial fruits jams. This process is essential to guarantee a product free of any unwanted microorganisms. This process is essential to guarantee a product free of any undesirable microorganisms, to ensure a high level of food safety an extend shelf life of the jam. Usually, this pasteurization induce overheating (time and temperature) of the food product, which negatively impact the jam final quality.

To improve it’s high quality fruit jams production process, our client trusted SAIREM to find an efficient and innovative solution.

Main jam pasteurization constraints

The jam pasteurization process requires high temperature (about 90 °C) before conditioning to be sure to destroy the harmful micro-organisms that could be present in the products. Usually, to reach the requested temperature at the conditioning step, the jam must be overheated during the previous cooking phase, as there is heat losses all along the pipes.

So the issue our customer was facing was to keep an efficient pasteurizing process, while avoiding overheating or overcooking of the products, which alter its taste and organoleptic properties.

Microwave jam pasteurization solution proposed

Our engineers developed a continuous flow microwave reactor that can heat large amounts of jam in just a few seconds, just before conditioning, without altering the taste of the fruits. Our patented technology can adapt to very high production rates, from a few hundred kg/h to more than 15 tons/h.

With our solution, you can lower the cooking temperature of the jam by roughly 20°C. Just before conditioning, our microwave reactor quickly raises the temperature of the jam at 90 °C, in a few seconds only, in order to pasteurize it. By doing so, you avoid overcooking and overheating of your product.

Our client was thus able to save precious time in his fruit jam pasteurization process. Microwave technology has made it possible to gain in efficiency to maintain excellent food safety while preserving fruit quality. Our client was therefore able to continue to market high-end fruit jams and marmalades more quickly.

Key benefits of microwave jam pasteurization process

Microwave technology represents an excellent alternative to traditional pasteurization methods such as retort. The quick and homogeneous heating makes it possible to reach the ideal temperature to destroy bacteria without altering the taste and quality of the fruit and the final product.

The addition of our process to your production line will allow you to choose the right cooking temperature to respect the fruit while ensuring the sanitary quality of your consumer products :

• You can produce low sugar jams of high quality, by lowering the cooking temperature
• You preserve the integrity of your fruit pieces by heating the jam at the requested temperature for a very short time only
• Your production line needs few modifications as you simply need to replace a short section of your production line with our in-line reactor

As a food industry company you want to test microwave or RF technology to optimize your industrial processes?