Major Sterilisation Installation

Ever since the company started, we have been very heavily involved in the in-container sterilization of products in cans, jars, pouches and trays and have installed machines both from Hermann Stock of Germany and Surdry of Spain in both static and rotary

One of the biggest installations that we carried out was for the supply of 8 Surdry sterilizers for Westler Foods, state-of-the-art installation at Malton in Yorkshire.

Equipment was originally selected on the grounds of technical superiority, as the company had carried out extensive heat distribution tests on their products prior to purchase.

The installation of consisted of 4 x 5 cage static machines and 4 x 4 cage rotary units, all of which had the same cage size.

The system, which was fully automatic, operated primarily using steam in an atomized water spray environment, which has a big advantage in terms of heat penetration and an even heat distribution throughout the retort and the containers and very stable pressure control during come-up and hold and cooling.

The system at Westlers was supplied complete with a SteriNet Retort Supervisory Data Acquisition and Management System, which is located in their central laboratory to monitor and record each process as it takes place and to supply over 500 different variations of recipes and programmes to the retorts for the wide range of high quality products produced by Westlers.

As part of the package an R&D Retort was supplied to Westlers to enable them to establish suitable processes on cans, glass jars, pouches and plastic containers prior to production start up.