The Customer Pinneys supplies Scottish smoked salmon, natural wet fish and premium seafood products including delicatessen items and value added ready meals for M&S. Pinneys is part of Young’s Chilled Division, the UK’s leading producer of seafood for foodservice and retail markets, including all of the major multiples. The Requirement Pinneys was looking to increase capacity on a new line of high value steam cooked seafood products, including shell off shrimp, lobster and crab. The company wanted to upgrade from a manual blast chilling process to a fully automated in-line system with energy efficient cooling plant. The Solution Starfrost worked alongside parent company Star Refrigeration to provide a turnkey chilling tunnel and refrigeration plant package for Pinneys. Starfrost custom-designed a Hybrid Inline chilling Tunnel for Pinneys following successful product trials on the test unit at its Suffolk manufacturing facility. With a short lead time of only 12 weeks, the iline chilling tunnel and packaged refrigeration plant were installed at the Pinneys site. Star’s bespoke direct expansion refrigeration plant provides 123kW of cooling to the multi belt Hybrid. The Hyrbrid links the cooking and packaging line for shrimp, lobster and crab products and has a total chilling capacity of 1,500kg per hour. The new in-line chilling system has enabled Pinneys to boost capacity and increase product quality. The Design The Pinneys Hybrid features high velocity impingement air flow and an increased surface area on the air cooler. The increased air velocity allows rapid cooling to minimise weight loss and maximise product quality. With hot product entering the chiller, it was critical to have an increased surface area on the air cooler to allow longer running between defrosts.