The Customer

Newburgh Foods is a UK-based provider of high-quality retail, foodservice and wholesale poultry products, supplying major supermarkets, restaurants and fast food chains across England.

The Requirement

The poultry processor had an existing contract with a fast food chain that recently increased its capacity requirements. This led Newburgh Foods to review its blast freezing process capabilities and seek a solution that would fulfil the substantial increase for its customer.

The Solution

Starfrost supplied and custom-built a Helix spiral freezer that was designed to fit seamlessly within the existing production layout. Using natural refrigerant CO2, the Helix spiral freezes up to 20 tonnes per day and has enabled Newburgh Foods to significantly increase its production capacity by 60%. In addition, the freezer has delivered increased efficiency for the firm by reducing freezing times to less than 85 minutes. This is a substantial improvement from the previously used blast freezing method, which took between 12 to 15 hours.

Phil Trew, Operations Manager at Newburgh Foods

“We chose mechanical freezing over a nitrogen cryogenic alternative because it better suited our criteria and, of course, due to the soaring, unstable cost of gas. We needed to produce more product in less time if we were going to meet our new contract target and Starfrost worked with us to provide a freezing system that would perfectly suit our needs and the needs of our customer while being a cost effective solution.”

“The spiral freezer has allowed us to significantly increase production capacity by 60% and substantially reduce freezing time. The Intralox belt used in the spiral freezer is also quiet and reliable, making a big difference to the company’s production capabilities. The quality of the engineered equipment and specification provided by Starfrost has impressed the team at Newburgh Foods.”