TOMRA Sorting Solutions has installed a brand new 56 square meter cold room in its test and demonstration center in Leuven, Belgium.
Thanks to its new facility, TOMRA Sorting Solutions is now able to test the performance of its sorting machines for all individually quick frozen (IQF) products in a true-to life environment.
The conditioned room can accommodate two sorting machines at the same time, enabling parallel testing and comparisons. It features an indirect cooling system, fully controlled automatic access doors and LED lighting.
“It’s a fact that sorting performance and results are affected greatly by the external environment. Defrosting, sticking of the product and changing defect conditions are known issues when testing IQF products. Normal operating temperature in IQF production facilities is around five degrees, but we can set our cold room as low as minus two degrees,” says Wim Van Doren, sales application manager at TOMRA Sorting Solutions.
“Our investment in this cold room allows our customers to see the sorting line in realistic circumstances and they can see first-hand the capabilities of our machines operating in these severe conditions.”
TOMRA’s new cold room will be managed by Wim Van Doren’s demo team, but it will also be used by other departments, such as research and development (R&D).
“The cold room can be implemented as well for long-term validations/trials of sorting machines for R&D purposes, to serve our customers even better,” adds Van Doren.