Ideal Foods has chosen ACS&T to supply blast freezing and cold storage facilities for its chilled and frozen fish products.
The specialist supplier of whitefish, shellfish and tuna is based in Liskeard, Cornwall. It delivers some 120 pallets of chilled food per week to ACS&T’s plant in Grimsby where it is frozen. Another 150 pallets of frozen goods are handled every week, along with other products in various formats to Ideal’s specification for delivery anywhere across its global customer base.
Fish arrives chilled at 5 degrees centigrade. Once unloaded in controlled temperature conditions, pallets are transferred to the blast freezer where the temperature is rapidly reduced by blasting super-cooled air into the freezer.
Rapid freezing means that the water molecules in the fish form smaller ice crystals, maintaining the high quality of the product and allowing it to be frozen for longer periods than would be possible with more conventional methods.
In total ACS&T holds around 1250 pallets of products for Ideal Foods in its cold store every week, and this can rise to around 1,800 or even 2,500 at peak demand times.
“ACS&T proved to us that it had the capacity and expertise to meet the complex demands of processing and frozen storage of our products,” said Ideal Food’s managing director Tony Horner.
“Importantly, its blast freezing service gives us the guarantee of high quality and the flexibility we need to meet demand.”
