Major quality gains with new vacuum cooler
Flowers Plants News: July 1, 2021
This spring, Weber Cooling installed a vacuum cooler at SQ Flora in Naaldwijk. Quality is key, as the cliché goes, and the trade is also criticized when flowers fall over in the store. Cooling as much as possible is therefore a must, and this can be done most quickly and efficiently with vacuum cooling.
“When it leaves us, the trade has to be as cold as possible. Preferably around 4 or 5 degrees,” explains Steven van Reeven, the salesperson at the trading company. “In the chain, the stems practically always warm up again, a trolley is always outside somewhere for a while. There is an increase of 10 degrees between the moment we send it out and the moment the customer unpacks the flowers. However, from 4 or 5 to 14 or 15 degrees is still a huge gain compared to 14 or 15 degrees to 24 or 25 degrees.”
All conceivable (measuring) points cool down at the same speed
The cooler at work at SQ Flora Because that is what normally happens. In standard cooling, it takes hours for the cold to penetrate properly. Moreover, the heat is in the box, and when these are stacked on pallets, especially in the middle pair. With vacuum cooling, this logic does not apply: the crop cools down at the same speed at all conceivable (measuring) points. This happens at a breakneck pace – 20 or 25 minutes is usually sufficient, and also in larger steps.
The principle of vacuum cooling is that it goes faster as you remove more water from the product. This also means that not all products can withstand this equally well. In the fruit and vegetable sector, for example, strawberries and asparagus appear to be unable to withstand large sudden temperature changes. “We don’t have a list of what can or cannot be done,” says Steven, “but we have indeed been able to determine that hydrangea and bouvardia, for example, have a harder time withstanding this rapid cooling. A number of green bouquet fillers also turned out not to be very strong. But large products such as chrysanthemums, lilies or lisianthus are harder and that works very well.”
In terms of trade, SQ Flora is very much in the Middle East. That is to say, everything is air freight, products never leave on water but always dry in a box. In flowers, a functioning cold chain is always of great importance, but leaving a box of peonies in the sun for a moment at 20 or let alone 40 degrees is disastrous.
Data logger
“We send a data logger with almost all shipments,” Steven concludes. “That is primarily for claims, but we can also map out where and when the temperature increases the most. That way you find out that it almost always has to wait somewhere, and that is how we also arrive at that approximately 10 degrees of warming.”
There is 1 unit installed, with which one pallet can be cooled at a time. The advantages of this have not gone unnoticed in the chain. More and more growers are using the technology, and Weber has also installed several systems at various traders at and around the auction.