The many advantages of using IQF Technology in your food products

In the basic form of IQF, the produce doesn’t get a treatment other than being washed and frozen. This is the case for small products like leafy greens, herbs, or berries. Bigger products, like vegetables, are also cut or sliced in smaller parts before they are individually frozen. This gives you all the advantages of IQF explained above, but it gets even better if we add one more process…

If we turn the produce into juice, paste or puree first, and then into IQF pellets, we open up a whole new world of possibilities:

The juice or puree is now sprayed onto a conveyor belt, and immediately frozen by the liquid nitrogen.

And now the fun begins: By adjusting parameters like pressure, the amount of product released, and the speed of the conveyor belt, we can actually start designing the drops.

The amount of product can be adjusted: It’s possible to make pellets of 2, 4, 8, 10… up to 20 grams in one drop! This dramatically reduces complexity in weighing and mixing processes.

Longer dispersal on a travelling conveyor belt results in a stretched shape instead of a compact drop, great for sauces or fillings in meat or veggie products. Having these ready in the shape you need makes it a lot easier to use them in your production.

Liquids can be more difficult to manage than solid ingredients. If you work with juices, passion fruit pulp or coconut milk, you know exactly what we are talking about. Having these ingredients in tangible IQF pellets instead of liquids makes them a lot easier to handle and integrate into your products.

The other advantages still count too; No big drums with leftovers means less waste, and the specific weight of a pellet makes it very easy to add exactly 4 grams of any liquid into a dish or drink.

Imagine a pizza pesto, made in the kitchen of a restaurant, or in an industrial production line. Both examples need to achieve accurate dosing to keep the costs under control.

In the restaurant kitchen, the staff puts 8 IQF drops of 5 grams on a pizza, instead of using a piping bag with a big error margin. The level of control you get when working with IQF technology provides a high level of precision and reduces errors in your production, saving both time and money.

In the factory the accuracy is achieved by dosing mechanically, but use IQF instead and you avoid cleaning your dosing machine between 2 flavors, and switch immediately between recipes without cleaning.

Now we are using juice or puree, we can start blending multiple ingredients. Combinations can be added as if they were a single ingredient, or we can even add complete recipes. The image you see here is an actual depiction of a curry madras pellet that is made of no less than 18 ingredients, ready to pop into your ready meal in the exact amount you need.

Using IQF pellets becomes a plug & play solution that will enable you to see complex recipes as simple ingredients. You will be able to do more with your existing production capacity, and bring innovative products to your market fast, without heavy investments in new machinery.

A doubtful statement mathematically, but it does make sense from a business perspective. Let us explain by using a simple example:

• You’re a food service provider and you offer 5 smoothies to your customers.
• Now put 3 jars with IQF pellets in your freezer, and on your price list, preferably with a catchy name… How about Smoothie Boosters?
• You can now sell 15 combinations by just blending 1 pellet in a smoothie, or a lot more if you let customers combine your Smoothie Boosters.
• Customers get more choices and a higher quality product, while the extra handling is negligible as there’s no extra washing, peeling, slicing…
• Thanks to the extra experience and the greater nutritional value, you can increase your markup.

Don’t be afraid to think out of the box! Customers are on the lookout for wild ideas, as long as they’re they’re clean, natural and healthy. How about Acerola, Spirulina, or Baobab?

The advantages IQF technology has to offer can be a changemaker for your food company, no matter which market you are focussing on: Meat, Fish and Seafoods, Vegan & Vegetarian, Ready Meals & Snacks, Beverages, Bakery, you name it.

After reading all of the above, it shouldn’t come as a surprise that frozen foods in general, and the IQF market specifically, is in a serious uptrend right now. This growing demand and interest in IQF products is registered at a global level.

There still is discussion between the different market analysts though, but not in whether the market will continue to boom or not. They just don’t agree on how hard it will continue to grow exactly. This is what the analysts are saying: