Four years ago we were approached by Mark Soetman, an enthusiastic businessman who works on innovations in the food sector. In China, he had come across a very promising new freezing technology, Radio Magnetic Freezing or RMF, and he was looking for a partner who wanted to start working on this with him here. When we went on site together and took a look, we saw the same enormous potential as he did. The last few years we have been hard at work to create a fully viable technology. In 2022 we have reached an important milestone. By this summer we will be able to commission a continuous RMF plant.
The benefits
Right now IQF (Individual Quick Freezing) is the standard. RMF has the following advantages over IQF:
- The quality of the frozen products – in terms of colour, taste and freshness – is a whole lot better.
- The shelf life of the products increases substantially.
- It consumes less energy, partly because it takes less time to freeze products, and also because fewer ice crystals form.
“Traditional technologies are mainly focussed on reducing damage while freezing – caused by the formation of ice crystals. From this point of view: the quicker you freeze, the better”, explains Mark Soetman. “RMF takes a different approach, which helps as far as is possible to prevent any ice crystals forming at all, which also means that it really doesn’t matter how quickly you actually freeze the product.”
See for yourself
The continuous RMF facility was set up in the spring in Helmond – built on the basis of a design based on the experience gained over the last few years – is still has fairly limited capacity. “This allows us on average to freeze between 250 and 450 kilo per hour. Over the next six months we are going to use this to produce, validate and create small production quantities for a number of customers. RMF is a good example of a technology that customers need to test on their own products, so that they can see for themselves that it is not too good to be true. We can then also define the requirements that need to be met and the parameters that need to be applied, in order to build a customer-specific machine that is totally tuned to their product. After those six months, we will also have a good overview of the costs that this involves.”
From small to large
The test period – co-financed by a public MIT R&D subsidy, with partners such as Nobleo and Felcon being involved – will also be used to further fine-tune the technology as necessary. After that, we will know enough to build a continuous RMF facility where large-scale production of 2,500 kilo per hour and more can take place. Then we can take this to market. In addition, we are very busy setting up the necessary organisational conditions for this. For example, thinking about the expansion of technical facilities and chiller and freezer capacity. “Scaling up and checking innovative food processing technologies and making these accessible to the industry is one of the core activities of Food Tech Brainport”, says Jos de Boer from Food Tech Brainport. “Any real impact in the area of energy savings, retaining flavour, ingredients, and quality using new technologies happens in production, not in the laboratory or test environment. We are proud to be able to make a contribution to speeding up this innovation by using our network and capital. Here’s to many more nice, healthy and above all delicious applications in the future!”
Plenty more to come
As far as Mark is concerned, there are still more than enough opportunities out there for the future. “For now we have focussed mainly on high-value products such as meat and fish, large fishing fleets and slaughterhouses have already shown interest. But many more applications are possible, such as ice-cream and bread, there’s really something for any company that wants a fresher product. I am convinced that RMG will be the new standard in the next several decades. We are just taking it one step at a time.”
