Ammonia refrigerant honoured in &lsquo;Food Plants of the Year&rsquo;

Opened in June 2011, the Request Foods’ second plant in Holland, Michigan has been honoured by the Refrigerated & Frozen Foods, a publication dedicated to food and beverage manufacturing market, as one of the “Food Plants of the Year” 2011-12. The almost 34,400-m² plant utilises ammonia refrigeration in processing of frozen skillet meals, single- and multi-serve entrees.

Refrigerated & Frozen Foods’ 2011-12 ‘Food Plants of the Year’ feature demonstrates just how important food plants are to their parent companies in terms of saving energy and cutting costs.

Request Food’s ammonia refrigeration plant

The new 370-square-foot (almost 34,400 m²) plant of Request Foods’, co-packer of frozen entrees and side dishes in Michigan, uses natural working fluid ammonia in cooling processes. Heat is recovered from the ammonia refrigeration equipment and used for sanitation water pre-heating. The heat recovered from boilers and boiler blow-down equipment is used to heat boiler feed water. The ammonia refrigeration equipment has variable speed compressors to handle various load demands associated with as many as four refrigeration temp requirements. The plant also uses:

variable speed air compressors
compressed air monitoring system

Advanced process management technologies

Production kitchens at the new Request Foods facility are process controlled and feature an Allen Bradley system that controls every aspect of sauce heating, cooling and product transfer prior to use on production lines. The facility management system enables gathering of all kinds of relevant data in real time, including air pressure, cooler / freezer temperatures, ammonia system output.

The plant’s additional features include:

special tile flooring with smaller grout lines and less pours than typical diary brick in mist food plants
stainless steel utility piping
stainless insulted metal panels
stainless steel curbs