Report from Worldwide Food Expo, Chicago 2007
Worldwide Food Expo in Chicago, held October 24-27, is the largest food and beverage processing and packaging event during 2007. Tetra Pak Cheese and Powder Systems showed a new cheese VAT, the Tetra Scherping Yield Master VAT, which rendered even more interest than expected. New cheese vats are a rare event on the market but the VAT shown at WWFE is an innovation specifically made for large scale producers. It is CIP-able, is fully sanitary and has a smaller surface area on the knives. This means gentler handling of the cheese curd. Behind this development are Tim Czmowski and George Schwingammer together with a design/engineering team. The exhibited vat on site was sold prior to the show and is now being sent to a customer for trial runs. The Tetra Scherping Casein Fat Standardiser, which was another highlight of the Tetra Pak CPS booth, was also being shipped to a customer immediately following the show.
Tim Czmowski, who has worked in the cheese industry for over 20 years and is an international cheese judge and the assistant chief judge for the world cheese competition stated, "The future of cheese is very bright! Demand is growing and we are here to answer the call. Cheese as an ingredient is growing as is daily consumption. Breakfast, lunch and dinner – cheese is being consumed at all meals."
Two presentations were held at the show’s seminar programme, one on microparticulation by Arjen De Boer, Senior Scientist at Tetra Pak Tebel and the other on casein/fat standardisation by Tim Czmowski, Senior Cheese Technologist and Sales, Tetra Pak Cheese and Powder Systems.
Cold news
Tetra Pak Hoyer showed a prototype of a scissor cutting application for the first time, and is used on a Hoyer Straightline in conjunction with products that have large inclusions. It was launched at the show and received a lot of interest, especially from Japanese and European customers.
Another item on show that drew lots of visitors was the Hoyer Frigus KF 2000 F C02, an environmentally friendly freezer that uses C02 instead of Freon or Ammonia for the freezing. The machine is much safer from an environmental viewpoint and more energy efficient.
Wow-factor!
Tetra Pak Dairy & Beverage showed the new flash cooling vessel on the Tetra Therm Aseptic VTIS and it was very popular. Many of the comments heard from customers was "wow, smart design, innovative, value added, when will we get one". Some of the highlights are easy maintenance, space saving in regards to height, and easier inspection. The new flash cooling vessel is one of many upcoming improvements with the new generation UHT modules.