‘Fruit-centric’ Engineering Drives A Quarter Century of Growth For Ripening Room One Of Industry Leaders

By Sean Rothman

When a ripening room can guarantee that each and every truckload of bananas will be ripened to the exact same color at the exact same time - that’s impressive. But when that guarantee extends to ripening bananas to multiple color stages in the same room at the same time – that’s more than impressive, it’s downright amazing! It’s also business as usual for Thermal Technologies.

As global leader in the design, manufacture and installation of produce ripening rooms, Thermal Tech has been providing that same ripening guarantee with every one of their TarpLess® ripening room installations since they patented the system over 25 years ago. That extends to more than 3,000 room installations worldwide including 18 of the Top 20 retailers in North America.

During a recent visit to their sprawling 80,000 square foot manufacturing and corporate headquarters facility outside of Columbia, SC, towering stacks of evaporators and bustling assembly lines were impressive indicators of global demand. Even more impressive was seeing these towering 42-pallet capacity rooms in action during a follow-up tour of a nearby TarpLess® ripening room installation at the DC of one of the nation’s top retailers. That’s when the full magnitude of Thermal Tech’s ripening guarantee truly struck home.

Each of the 18 huge, two-truckload capacity ripening rooms at the facility featured multiple temperature control zones, allowing bananas in each room to be ripened to different color stages at the same time. Being able to guarantee ripening uniformity in rooms of that size with multiple temperature control zones made it abundantly clear that Thermal Tech knows a thing or two about turning out the industry’s highest quality fruit.

“What clearly sets these rooms apart from other systems is our commitment to Fruit-centric engineering and control,” says David Byrne, Thermal Tech VP of Sales. “By making fruit quality the driving force behind all technological innovation we not only build a better ripening room, we avoid the common pitfalls of over-engineering we often see when technology is given precedence over the fruit. This goes for our control system as well. While other systems rely on air-temperature to dictate conditions, we have always used actual pulp temperatures as the primary basis for room control.”

Beyond giving their clients total control over the ripening process and maximum operational flexibility, Mr. Byrne went on to explain that the TarpLess®