Food for all needs and tastes
Today’s consumer looks for wholesome, tasty and natural foods containing as few additives as possible. Modern food processing is a question of creating a commercially viable product in terms of price and shelf life, while preserving as much of the natural flavour, texture, and nutritional value as possible.
Alfa Laval holds a strong position as a supplier of products, systems and complete solutions for a number of food segments. It was in the food sector that we started our business in 1883, where the company’s continuous milk separator laid the foundation for the dairy industry. Today, Alfa Laval serves the dairy industry with a complete product range in cooperation with its alliance partner, Tetra Pak, which provides integrated processing, packaging and distribution solutions.
Separation, heating, cooling and transport of viscous food products and products containing particles require specialist know-how. Alfa Laval has acquired substantial competence in this field and supplies efficient solutions for foods such as soups, sauces, baby food, tomato products, jams and confectionaries.
We also help producers of vegetable oils develop healthy products of high quality that increase their margins. We supply solutions for oils extracted from every type of oil-bearing material such as plant material, seeds and olives.
Alfa Laval has a long tradition within palm oil refining and offers solutions for every stage of refining including deodorization, hydrogenation, de-gumming and soap stock splitting.Our deliveries to the olive oil industry include equipment for all operations from washing through crushing, malaxing and extraction to final clarification of the oil.
Soy is another important food material. It is not only a high-quality protein; it is also thought to play a preventive and therapeutic role in certain diseases. Alfa Laval equipment such as high-speed separators, decanters, membrane filtration systems, pumps, valves and agitators is widely used for the production of numerous soy products.
Alfa Laval provides numerous process solutions for extracting and refining fats and proteins from surplus raw material in the fish and meat industries, which are now increasingly utilized for the production of high-value fats and proteins for food ingredients.
In particular, the protein part is an important potential that can be used for, for example, functional proteins, flavour ingredients and bioactive components that serve as food supplements. We provide specialized equipment, systems and know-how for all steps in the processing chain including preparation and heating, clarification, solids separation, fractionation and evaporation.
Alfa Laval also offers a comprehensive range of equipment for cleaning and concentration of starch when it has been released from raw materials such as wheat, maize, manioc, rice or potatoes. The range includes disc-stack centrifuges for clarification, concentration, classification and washing, decanters for dewatering and heat exchangers for preheating, evaporation and condensation.
The overall economy of sugar production depends on the cost of energy. Alfa Laval’s heat exchangers, including the wide-gap plate heat exchanger and the plate evaporator, both tailor-made for this industry, help sugar producers to maximize product quality and minimize energy costs.
Alfa Laval supplied the first continuous centrifuge for the harvesting of bakers’ yeast as early as the 1890s. Today, we offer the fermentation industries a wide range of centrifuges, heat exchangers, filters and strainers meeting the high hygienic needs of these industries for the production of bakers’ yeast, fodder yeast, yeast extract, amino acids and starter cultures