Precoolers Help Fresh Cuts Stay Fresh Longer

Forced-air precoolers are essential to grower-packers around the world, in order to preserve freshness and shelf-life for fruits, vegetables, and flowers.  “The simple fact is that, the faster you remove the field heat, and get the perishable to ideal storage temperature,” explained Jim Still, president of Global Cooling Inc., “the more saleable weight you retain, and the longer shelf life you have.”

“We are seeing increased interest from a number of fresh cut processors and packers, for ‘re-cooling’” claimed Still.  “When they select or pull their raw product from cold storage, be it fruit, vegetables, or dip” he explained, “nearly everything starts at the ideal long-term storage temperature.  But then – before, during, and after cutting and / or packaging – the product temperature can creep up into the mid-40-degree-farenheit range, sometimes even a little hotter.  This is not a good thing for freshness and shelf-life, not to mention the “sell by” dates.

“This is when our Precoolers can be used as ‘Re-Coolers’”, he explained.  “So many facilities’ managers, have little option but to put the pallets of packaged fresh cut, into their cold rooms’ pallet racking, and leave it there overnight to cool back down.”  This, according to Still, is not best practices, nor does it maximize the shelf-life of the products.  “Those ‘Best if Used By Dates’ on the packaging,” he stated, “are only reliable if the cold chain is unbroken.  And if the recooling time after packaging is too long, well….”, he hesitated, seeming to try to find the right words, “well, your shelf life is variable. “

“Our precoolers can re-cool palletized fresh cuts in one or two hours,” he claimed, “when set up in an existing cold room.  Most often, additional refrigeration is not needed.”  This is because, according to Still, the heat load coming off of fresh cuts  “is much much less than with field temperature produce, often only 10-degrees-farenheit as opposed to 50- or 60-degrees. “  Still said that the speed of recooling with his equipment, “greatly simplifies the job of the operations manager, to have a predictable and reliable recooling time, instead of constantly checking on pallets every hour or two in cold storage to see how they are doing.” 

Global’s precoolers are being used for other purposes, Still said, including drying onions, recooling ripened avocados, drying just-washed RPCs, recooling grapes and blueberries after fumigation, cooling cherries in MAP for export, and more.  “Being located in Philadelphia, home of the cheese steak sandwich, “it is only a matter of time before we have a precooler used to temper beef before slicing,” he smiled.

“We have one customer that uses Jet-Ready Precoolers to speed-thaw pallets of frozen guacamole,” explained Still.  “During peak avocado harvest time, they make a lot more guacamole than they can sell fresh, so the rest goes into frozen storage.  And there is a lot of it,” he said.  “Before they came to us, it was taking 30 days to thaw pallets of frozen product with room cooling, or maybe better put as ‘room thawing’, in a 34-degree-farenheit room.  When you are shipping two truckloads a day, this meant that, at any given time, they might have as many as 1,200 pallets of product in cold storage, just slowly thawing.  What a nightmare for operations, and what an expensive proposition.” 

After purchasing three of Global’s Jet-Ready Precoolers, and putting them to work in their 34-degree rooms in Los Angeles, Houston, and Newark, the thawing process is now accomplished in 12 hours.  “Talk about night and day,” beamed Still.  “Can you just imagine the difference our Jets made to this customer?  Instead of hundreds and hundreds of thawing pallets in the cold room, he has at most 40 on an average day.  And think about what the speed thawing process does for saleable shelf life and food safety….” He concluded, his words left hanging in the air.

Global’s factory is located in the Philly Navy Yard Business Park, nearby to this week’s Democratic National Convention, just off Broad Street in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.   “The city has closed both off ramps from I-95 to South Broad Street,” said Still, “as part of their security efforts.  It’s an inconvenience, but a small price to pay to help safeguard our liberties and freedom.”

At the Navy Yard, Global manufactures both the portable Jet-Ready, and the pallet-racking-based Rapid-Cool, Precoolers, both of which are steadily growing in popularity among growers and warehousemen alike.   “It might seem incongruent that a postharvest company is based on the East Coast,” continued Still, “when so many of the farms are on the West Coast, Texas, Florida, Mexico, and the Caribbean.”  “But I like to think that some other revolutionary and valuable ideas had Philadelphia as their birthplace too,” he grinned.  “And fresh cut facilities are most often located close to the regions or cities that they serve,” he explained, “which means we have quite a few of them in the Philly, New York, Baltimore, Boston corridor.”

“Our Jet and Rapid-Cool  Precoolers are made in America,” explained Global’s Vice President James J. Still, “right here in Philadelphia at the Philly Navy Yard business park.  All of our components are the best that money can buy, and our portables are amazingly powerful, we consistently outperform plenum and bunker wall systems, and farm-built box fans too, time after time.  Believe it or not, we are also less expensive too.  And with the Rapid-Cool 2-, 3-, and 4-high pallet-racked systems, the airflow is just ridiculous, as high as 7,000 cfm per pallet.”

For more information, about Global’s Precoolers and ReCoolers, go to:   www.PreCoolers.net.  Or eMail to: [email protected].  Or call 1-844-858-4621, local 1-610-248-9800.  Ask to talk with Jim Still, Founder/President/CVO, Global Cooling Inc.

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