More flexible production of dog and cat food
A premium pet food manufacturer used to thaw meat for two days in a thawing room. With a Sairem microwave system it takes ten minutes, exactly to current orders.
The customer
A major Czech manufacturer of premium natural food for dogs and cats. It produces without chemical preservatives or flavour enhancers, with a high share of meat from quality Czech farmers. During a tour of the plant, our colleague noticed that the manufacturer uses chicken from the same farm he buys from for his own family.
The challenge
Deep-frozen chicken, turkey and beef are stored in a large freezer and must be thawed to around −2 °C before processing. Crates of meat therefore stood in a thawing room for up to two days.
This kind of thawing was slow and inflexible, and the meat lost water and protein. The result was less usable raw material and lower product quality.
The solution
We proposed a Sairem NutriTemp Batch (AMW 200) microwave tempering system. It handles up to 400 kg of raw material per hour from −20 °C to −4 to −2 °C. One cycle takes about 10 minutes, so production can start virtually immediately.
Microwaves heat the meat evenly throughout its volume, which greatly reduces losses of water and protein and keeps the meat’s natural structure. A process that used to take tens of hours now takes minutes, and the machine’s compact size freed up space in the production hall.
The customer put it best: “I don’t understand how we managed without this.”
Benefits
- Speed: thawing went from days to minutes.
- Quality: the meat keeps its texture, taste and nutrients.
- Space saving: the thawing room is no longer needed.
- Flexibility: production responds to current orders, not to last week’s plan.
- Higher profitability: lower losses of water and protein mean up to 10 % more product to sell, plus lower operating costs.
