Afrox is meeting ever-increasing consumer demands in the frozen food industry with its family of CRYOLINE® freezers, designed to improve efficiency, quality and safety of food preservation while minimising cost of ownership and enhancing operational flexibility.

Hendrik Pretorius, Applications Engineer at Afrox, says customers in the frozen food industry expect the highest quality and latest technology whilst still maintaining value. The CRYOLINE® range of freezers has been developed by Afrox’s parent company, the Linde Group, and meets these market requirements with their extremely proficient cryogen and airflow technologies, providing maximum heat transfer rates and optimum use of cryogens to guarantee perfect product quality. 

Cryogenic freezing of food with liquid nitrogen is a high speed freezing process that is well-established in the food industry. It allows for the convenient preservation of food with minimal dehydration, drip loss and cell destruction, leading to improved taste, shape, texture, moisture and nutritional value.

Pretorius explains that all the CRYOLINE® freezers are equipped with the best and most reliable technology allowing for efficient handling, less downtime and lower costs, while at the same time meeting stringent hygiene standards.

"The food industry is constantly challenged to meet the ever-increasing consumer demands for quality and variety, with consumers seeking a continuous stream of innovative and interesting products,” says Pretorius.

The CRYOLINE® range, along with a broad variety of other food freezing technologies from the Linde freezer pool, meets all these food preservation demands. 

Pretorius says that Afrox’s efficient cooling and freezing processes significantly increase output and product quality which enhances the aesthetic value of food. Furthermore, the CRYOLINE® freezers have user-friendly controls while standardised and confirmed daily transactions are stored to memory so little or no manual adjustment is needed, reducing the risk of human error and allowing for shorter start-up times.

The design of the freezers draws on Linde’s world-class engineering expertise and adheres to industry best practice standards with training for key staff offered at start-up. Equipment can be tailor-made to meet individual client requirements and adapted to customer production in order to meet high individual quick freezing (IQF) quality, increased production rates, high freezing or cooling capacity within a small space, increased product yield and improved product quality.

The Linde Group operates an international freezer pool comprising popular models and common basic elements, making CRYOLINE® freezers readily available to customers around the world.
Most standard equipment is therefore available off the shelf and delivered ‘ready to run’ with usually only a few days required for installation. Their low maintenance design makes them easy to operate with no need for specialised knowledge.

The CRYOLINE® freezer range covers a broad spectrum of products from baked goods, fish and fish products, to pasta, vegetables and convenience food, and includes:

• CRYOLINE® CF cabinet freezers, suitable for small batch operations where food trolleys are manually loaded. They provide excellent flexibility for a variety of food products and are available in several models and sizes. The freezers operate with nitrogen or carbon dioxide

• CRYOLINE® CW multi-purpose freezers with cryowave controllable vibration technology which allows adjustable product amplitude for optimisation of IQF food. The freezers are available in various models with typical production rates of 500 - 2 700 kg/h

• CRYOLINE® XF high performance spiral freezers, built for large-scale capabilities from 2 500 - 7 500 kg/h. Their patented technology delivers twice the heat transfer rate of commercial spiral freezers with a smaller footprint and higher production capacity. The freezers are suitable for high moisture and high temperature products such as cooked poultry, seafood and prepared meals.

For further information about the CRYOLINE® range of freezers available from Afrox, contact Hendrik Pretorius on +27 11 490 0570 or hendrik.pretorius@afrox.linde.com.