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Our Plate Freezers feature refrigerant-filled plates which make direct contact with cartons of product to provide a rapid, energy efficient freeze.

Introducing plate freezers on a commercial scale across Australia has saved approximately 15-20% of the energy consumption used for freezing in the meat industry, resulting in a significant reduction in greenhouse gases.

More than 200 plate freezer installations have been completed in Australia to date, and we have the capability to export these to all markets.

SSO Plate Freezers

Single station opening (SSO) is our most advanced plate freezer model.

Each station in the plate freezer stack can be opened and closed individually, allowing one station to be open for loading and unloading while the others remain closed to continue the freezing process.

This functionality results in up to 3.5 hours additional contact time with the plates during each cycle, reducing the overall cycle time or allowing for a higher evaporating temperature to further reduce energy consumption.

Products are transferred from the infeed conveyor to the cradle, which elevates and lowers to load cartons into each station. A second elevating cradle is used for unloading frozen cartons, which takes place simultaneously.

Applications

Plate freezers are suitable for freezing a range of products, including red meat, pork, poultry and liquid cream, where there is:

• High volume throughput
• Uniformity of carton size

SSO plate freezers are particularly suitable for the following applications:

• Hot boned meat or offal product – the SSO model gets the product in contact with the plates more quickly than the FCF model, providing a vastly improved RI outcome
• Where there are limitations on the building footprint – SSO plate freezer enclosures have almost half the footprint of FCF plate freezer enclosures

Benefits

• Fast freezing – the typical 48 hour freezing cycle of air blast freezers is reduced to 24 hours in plate freezers – improving the refrigeration index, and reducing stock inventory and time to market. The SSO plate freezer provides our fastest freeze.
• Energy efficient – plate freezers typically provide 25-30% electrical energy saving over blast freezing. In some operations, the additional contact time provided by the SSO model may allow for a higher evaporating temperature to further reduce energy consumption.
• Product output with uniformly flat surfaces to improve product presentation and deliver space efficiencies in palletising, container loading and distribution – delivering a freight saving of 8% in 20-foot containers
• Hands-free operation with automated loading and unloading
• Reliable and low maintenance
• SSO plate freezers have a smaller footprint than FCF plate freezers, reducing the building costs for the plate freezer enclosure

Configuration Options

Each plate freezer installation is custom designed to meet the client’s processing requirements. Consideration is given at the design stage to allow flexibility for future additions, extensions and upgrades as product throughput requirements grow.

Plate freezers are available in automatic, semi-automatic or manual configurations, and supplied using ammonia (NH3) as the refrigerant.

Capacity options typically range from 600 to 3,072 standard meat cartons, or 16 to 84 tonnes of product.

Milmeq

Milmeq, whose automated chilling and freezing systems have established the global benchmark for cooling and freezing meat, poultry and dairy products in cartons or crates, were acquired by MHM Automation in 2018.