Hahn Brings New Production Facility into Action

This change in production workflow represents a great improvement in the quality of production equipment and manufacturing process. Furthermore, this is an important step in further improvement of food safety standards.

26/11/07 G. C. HAHN & Co. (now part of Tate & Lyle), a leading manufacturer and worldwide supplier of customized food stabilizer systems invested EUR8 million in its production facility in Lübeck to secure long term competitive advantages with respect to food safety. The existing site has been extended with a new 1,900 m² production hall with 2,770 m² floor space and an interior volume of 22,550 m³. Apart from these impressive figures, the objectives that were set for this investment were very clear. In future, HAHN’s production of food stabilizer systems should be in compliance with the most demanding customer requirements and the stringest legal regulations, regarding hygiene, quality and safety standards.

To achieve these objectives, HAHN has chosen a new state-of-the-art production system, based on a production process using sealed flexible mobile containers instead of a more open air-flow based powder transport system. This change in production workflow represents a great improvement in the quality of production equipment and manufacturing process. Furthermore, this is an important step in further improvement of food safety standards.

All aspects concerning environmental protection and hygiene will be improved as well, like more efficient cleaning processes and dust reduction, also the risk of cross-contacts is strongly reduced with the new container system. Another important quality criterion is the complete transparency of the whole manufacturing chain with regard to raw materials used resulting in full traceability during all production steps.

All these aspects ensure and warrant the consistent functionality and high quality of HAHN stabilizer products, on which HAHN customers rely for their own quality assurance and safety of products and production processes. Further production facilities will be built up successivly and put into operation. The project is expected to be completed by July 2008.

Meanwhile, earlier this month Dr. Kai Knoerzer received the 10th international Georg Carl Hahn Research Prize at G. C. HAHN & Co., in Lübeck, Germany. The research focussed on the implementation of novel methods for the treatment and conservation of food products. The aim was to optimise the parameters influencing quality, such as the reduction of process times, which lead to improved levels of essential ingredients. In order to attain this optimisation, technologies were employed avoiding the low thermal conductivity of foods which is the rate-limiting and quality-reducing factor in conventional canned food production. This was achieved by volumetric heating methods. These new technologies comprised of microwave processes as well as high-pressure high-temperature processes which were further optimised by computer-aided modelling. Dr. Knoerzer, is presently working at the Innovative Foods Centre, Food Science Australia, a Joint Venture of CSIRO and the Victorian Government, Werribee, Australia.