JBT Avure Food Lab: making HPP a reality for customers worldwide

Keen to use High Pressure Processing (HPP) for your products, but not sure how best to ensure they are compatible? JBT Avure’s HPP Food Science and Laboratory Services offer concept testing and product development services that make sure your products – and the materials they are packaged in – are HPP-ready, and able to benefit from the quality, food safety and extended shelf life that the technology can deliver.

Highly effective in pasteurizing a wide range of products, HPP is a clean-label technology which uses pure water at incredibly high pressures – of up to 6,000 bar or 87,000 psi – to inactivate food-borne pathogens, like listeria, salmonella and E.coli without preservatives or chemicals.

Another significant advantage of HPP compared with heat-based pasteurization systems is its ability to preserve food’s natural nutritional attributes, as well as product flavor, color and texture. Avure HPP can also extend shelf-life by more than 90 days: up to two to more than four times longer than traditional preservation methods.

Avure’s world-renowned Food Lab

JBT Avure provides extensive product development services and microbiological validation studies to customers considering HPP. This proof of concept testing, includes access to Avure’s vast HPP food science expertise as well as use of a full-scale production machine.

To help gain regulatory approval, customers can also benefit from JBT’s world-renowned HPP research and development facility in Erlanger, Kentucky where we can help perfect products, formulas and packaging for HPP.

JBT also partners from several HPP Certified Laboratories worldwide to facilitate HPP product and process optimization and regulatory requirements.

Making HPP work for you

Avure’s Dr Errol Raghubeer (pictured) explains how it works: “What the lab does is three things: we test the compatibility of products for HPP. You bring a product in and if the formulation needs to be tweaked a little bit, we can do that and make it a product that is more acceptable to the technology.”

A second important function of the food lab is to conduct what Dr Raghubeer describes as “pathogen challenge studies”. These processes regularly validate that HPP is demonstrating its proven ability to inactivate potentially dangerous pathogens, such as salmonella, listeria or E. coli, to meet regulatory requirements and/or customers’ objectives.

Thirdly, the food lab works to make sure that packaging materials intended for use by customers are as compatible for HPP as the products themselves. “Sometimes the packaging can be a limiting factor, so we test the packaging and make a recommendation on the correct packaging – either bottles and caps or plastic bags – to make sure it meets the requirements for HPP,” Dr Raghubeer explains.

Working with thousands of food producers around the globe, the vast majority of commercially available HPP foods have been developed at JBT Avure’s Applications Center. Get in touch to find out how JBT Avure can support your product and business success.

FIND OUT MORE about how JBT Avure’s can help adapt your products to HPP.