The new BRC-certified (2008879) facility is equipped to process up to 10 tonnes of packaged products per day. Packaged products include meats, wet salads, hummus, guacamole, spreads, ready meals, seafood and fruit snacks, the company said. Additionally, baskets used for handling product entering high-pressure vessels will also be available onsite for load-out testing. The baskets for all sizes of Avure HPP equipment, such as the 350- and 525-liter systems, are available as well.
“Helmond is a great location not only for its geographical importance for serving a large area of Western Europe, but also because of the vast amount of food and beverage production that exists in the region,” said Jeff Williams, CEO of Avure Technologies. “The Food Tech Park Brainport and ‘De Groene Campus’ (Green Campus) are strategically placed where entrepreneurs, education, and government work closely together to innovate.
“We are surrounded there by technical demonstration lines, tasting factories, micro-biology labs, educational institutions with practical studies, and an apprenticeship factory for present and future Food & Beverage employees,” he added.
The facility will offer increased support and HPP tolling to a wide variety of customers throughout Belgium, The Netherlands, Luxembourg, Germany, and other countries close by.
“This gives us the ability to better support and serve our European customers in a way that is much more convenient and effective to them,” said Alexis Nys, managing director at Avure Technologies Europe, Middle East & Africa, based in Luxembourg.
In addition to pre-HPP services such as mixing and packaging, Avure's new center will feature post-treatment processing such as date printing, labeling, secondary packaging, chilled storage and freezing.
“This certainly fits our strategy to offer testing and NPD services globally so we can work closely with our customers before they buy one of our machines, or even use tolling services,” said Patrick Ditchfield, Avure vice president of Global Sales. “Our goal is to make our global customers’ journey to food safety, extended shelf-life, clean labels and freshness as seamless and efficient as possible.”
