Milmeq Plate Freezers feature refrigerant-filled plates which make direct contact with cartons of product to provide a rapid, energy efficient freeze. They are the largest plate freezers in the world, with capacities of up to 3,072 cartons.

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.

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

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
• Energy efficient – typically 25-30% electrical energy saving over blast freezing
• 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 10% in 20 foot containers
• Hands-free operation with automated loading and unloading
• Reliable and low maintenance

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.