petfood pro 3/2022

PROCESSING
How Continuous Food
Processing Equipment Holds
The Secret To Better Pet Food
Continuous naturalness in wet pet food
People love to treat their pets to the best,
so the demand for high quality pet food at
a reasonable price continues to rise. A big
challenge is to maintain consistency with
large production volume while achieving
shortest possible processing times – and
to create a nutritious product at the same
time. Valuable nutrients and proteins from
meat, fish, vegetables and cereals ideally
remain unchanged during processing
so that the product can meet the high
demands of animals and their owners.
Common Challenges In Pet Food
Production
Many factors can jeopardize consistency
and quality – both within a single batch
and between batches. Slow ineffective,
or over, heating causing inefficient use
of ingredients, degradation of proteins
and deviations in the product quality.
In contrast to typical batch and retort
cooking, the RotaTherm® heats the product
rapidly, but gently, in a continuous process
within seconds only to the required
temperature using priority direct steam
injection technology and thus offers
many advantages, like original colour of
product, unchanged shape of particulates,
low denaturation of proteins, minimized
waste, production breaks, utilities and
cleaning chemicals. You benefit from
more efficient, more productive and costeffective
manufacturing, your customer
from a more nutritious and consistent
product.
Consistency
As with most processed food, maintaining
consistency across large production
volumes can be challenging. This becomes
an even bigger problem if batch cooking
process is in use. With batch cooking,
you waste a substantial amount of time
to process each batch, often having to
wait to fill from a large buffer tank. This
stag ing, with varying dwell times before
filling can magnify inconsistencies,
leading to temperature loss and changes
in pressure, moisture, color and texture,
further overcooking without necessarily
hydrating.
Each of the issues above poses a threat
to consistency, within a single batch and
in between batches, leading to a lowerquality,
less consistent product. With end
customers willing to pay a premium for
quality pet food, this is the last thing you
want to happen! Inconsistencies alone
may not be the biggest concern, but they
are the source of inefficient ingredient
usage and end product variation.
Most pet food recipes combine several
different ingredients including meat,
vegetables, grains, stabilizers, by-products,
etc. Each of these have different levels of
viscosity and chunkiness, and different
requirements, therefore demanding
specific optimal cooking conditions to
guarantee a consistent texture – every
minute, hour and week of production.
Consistency is directly related to your
market growth because it keeps your
customers coming back.
Production Volumes
As part of the fast-moving consumer goods
industry, pet food is generally sold at low
profit margins, so high production and
sales volume are key to long-term survival
and a successful pet food business. With
batch processing, gaps in production are
often a part of daily operations. The batch
process is more time consuming, with time
allocated for preparing each batch, mixing
the ingredients, heating the formulation,
adjusting settings, waiting to fill before
starting the next batch and rinsing.
Each of these steps negatively impact
your efficiency and productivity as they
are done in series not parallel. Much of
your time is consumed performing nonvalue-adding
tasks, instead of producing
pet food, limiting the production volumes
your business strives to achieve.
Quality
Many recipes use a variety of different
ingredients – yours might combine
vegetables, meat and fish, as well as
powders, by-products and grains. As
we mentioned above, temperature,
moisture and pressure fluctuate between
batches, affecting the final composition
and causing unpredictable ingredient
usage. Denaturation of the proteins is the
result of long heating processes and the
naturalness of the products is no longer
guaranteed.
After cooking, a defined holding time
ensures the relevant bacteria killing to
be able to offer the final product with a
perfect shelf life. A hot fill process into
cans, casings or trays will help to keep
the product safe and protects against
recontamination. ‘Post filling’ cooling can
be done in a flexible way with a spiral cooler,
waterbath or cooling tunnel. Continuous
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Technology & Marketing