Seacatch nets a new freezing system
A flexible in-line freezing system from Starfrost has boosted business at a major UK seafood production facility.
Seacatch provides various production services to the seafood industry, including product freezing, poaching, grading, glazing, bandsawing, packing and labelling, and handles around 100 metric tonnes of seafood products per week for suppliers and blue chip clients.
Seacatch recently upgraded from a manual blast freezing process by investing in a fully automated in-line system – Starfrost’s Starlite HT (Hybrid Tunnel) – for protective glaze hardening and full freezing of wet fish fillets.
As a result, Seacatch says it has seen an increase in product quality and throughput – boosting related business by around 40 per cent.
Starfrost purpose-designed a multi-belt freezing system for Seacatch, featuring three 1.4m wide product belts within a 6.5m enclosed freezing tunnel. Each of the belts can be operated independently at different speeds or configured to work together on a cascade principle, which means Seacatch can process a variety of different products by making simple adjustments to belt configuration and speed.
“The Starlite HT freezing tunnel has been a real benefit to our company,” says Seacatch director Simon Chapman. “It has allowed us to increase capacity through our factory and offer an even higher quality product to our customers. The system’s flexibility, ease of use and very competitive price were key factors in our decision to work with Starfrost.”
