Pre-coolers 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 and vegetables.

As explained Jim Still, president of Global Cooling Inc., precoolers manufacturer from the USA: “The simple fact is that, the faster you remove the field heat, and get the perishable to ideal storage temperature, the more saleable weight you retain, and the longer shelf life you have.”

Jim Still sees increased interest from a number of fresh cut processors and packers, for ‘re-cooling’. When they select or pull their raw product from cold storage, be it fruits or vegetables, 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.”

Global’s precoolers are being used for different purposes, including drying onions, precooling ripened avocados, drying just-washed RPCs, recooling grapes and blueberries after fumigation, cooling cherries in MAP for export, and more.