More and more businesses are beginning to understand the importance of blast freezing as the cold storage market expands. As the demand for freshly frozen food rises, more businesses are impacted. So why is there a higher demand now for blast freezing? Here we look at the Advantages and Benefits for your business in using a blast freezer.
Quality preservation
The faster you can freeze a product, the easier it is to keep in moisture and nutrients of the food. This is where blast freezing can help significantly by ensuring you preserve food of good quality. Freezing with a blast freezer can also help prevent the formation of microcrystals between cells. As a result of these benefits, rapidly decreasing the temperature and freezing helps keep food products in a firm shape, locking in the nutritional benefits and flavour.
Health
Raw meat can be a breeding ground for several bacteria, including salmonella. In the wrong conditions, these bacteria can multiply quickly. Thankfully, cooking and freezing can keep this in control and kill off bacteria too. You can freeze large amounts of food stock with blast freezing in a concise timeframe.
Cost Benefits
Blast freezing can do a lot to minimise any waste from your stock. While refrigeration will help prolong the lifespan of food stock, freezing will stop bacteria breeding, meaning it stays in good condition for a significantly longer length of time. It can also help businesses expand the products they have on hand too.
Business benefits
If you need to increase your stock on hand quickly, blast freezers can help do this without hassle. They’re easy to set up, and you can begin blast freezing within the first few days to ensure you have the stock you need.
Blast freezers also help with logistics and storage in transport, especially in cross-docking. Cross-docking involves unloading stock from trucks, vans, lorries, or other transport and then loaded onto another transport to be sent along the supply chain or using blast freezers. This process can be beneficial as it gives the product little to no chance to defrost again when moved between containers.
You can find out more about logistics with cold storage here.
Benefits a Range of Industries
Many industries can find different uses for blast storage, including florists preserving flowers quickly, pharmaceutical companies quickly storing medicines, and bakers storing pastries.
Here are some ways blast freezing can help various industries:
Fish
Generally, Fish are easier to transport when frozen and, as a result, much cheaper too than transporting non-frozen fish. They also have a much longer shelf life and keep the quality much longer when frozen, resulting in less wasted stock.
Occasionally, freezing fish can leave the product mushy or wilted in the defrosting process, but blast-freezing is a great way to prevent this. In part because of the prevention of ice microcrystals we previously mentioned. However, the airflow pattern in blast freezing helps a lot by breaking up heat gradients. A fast airflow would typically mean the fish dehydrates, but as a blast freezer develops a frozen skin on the edges, this is prevented, keeping fish fresh when thawed.
Catering
Blast freezing for catering is hugely beneficial as you can freeze large quantities of stock quickly and in a way that locks in the quality, nutrients, and flavour of food. Large quantities of food can be transported quickly and efficiently. As catering can involve a sudden increase in stock before an event, this is where blast freezing can be beneficial.
Hospitals and schools
We’ve listed many benefits to blast freezing, locking in quality and nutrients previously. These benefits are also significant if you’re storing food for use in hospitals or schools as young children and those in poor health are particularly dependent on food with good nutrition. As blast freezing lets you store large amounts of stock at once, the freezers can be beneficial in these areas as there are usually many people who need to be fed, so having a good, well-kept stock is essential.
If you think your business can benefit from blast freezing, Get in touch today to speak with one of our experts and learn more about the CRS Blast Freezer range and its numerous benefits.
