SVZ Opens New R&D Pilot Plant

One of the key success factors for the pilot plant is that it is representative for the processes used by SVZ in the day-to-day production. Other factors are its practical use and the flexibility it offers.

11/08/08 SVZ International B.V., one of the leading suppliers of fruit and vegetable ingredients to the food industry has designed, engineered and built a new pilot plant that recently opened. This pilot plant is part of the central R&D department of SVZ and located at the head-office in Etten-Leur, the Netherlands. The pilot plant is used for product development, to carry out process research, and to produce larger samples with a representative quality.

Over the past few years, the R&D department has steadily increased its research activities. The research mainly focuses on product development for customers and on process research for the SVZ’s production facilities in Poland, Spain, the Netherlands, USA, and Morocco. Increased research activities resulted in a growing demand for a well equipped pilot plant. One of the key success factors for the pilot plant is that it is representative for the processes used by SVZ in the day-to-day production. Other factors are its practical use and the flexibility it offers.

The pilot plant includes unit operations such as: cutting/grinding, finishing, decantation/separation, heating/cooling (including enzymation), evaporating/concentration, filtering, homogenisation, mixing/blending/standardisation, and pasteurisation/sterilisation. With this pilot plant SVZ is able to produce puree’s, concentrated purees, compounds, NFC juices in various clarities, and clear and cloudy concentrates.

The pilot plant enables SVZ’s R&D department to carry out improved process research and product development. An increased number of customers request larger samples for their consumer research or to execute trial productions with SVZ ingredients. These samples must be representative - as close as possible to production materials - to meet the highest possible quality standards of the executed research. With the new pilot plant SVZ can fulfil these requirements.