US: Jet Precoolers used for South American berries
from Chile to be fumigated on arrival at USA ports. This enables exporters who are unable to fumigate at country of origin to have an alternative so that they can ship. It also creates a need to “Re-Cool” those berries immediately.
Not all USA port cold stores or nearby 3PLs have precoolers, which can be used for recooling the berries. But for those that do, the ability to quickly and thoroughly remove the heat from the fruit, and thus preserve shelf life and salable weight while reducing the need for repacking, is a tremendous benefit they can provide to their customers - the importing sales agencies, and in some case, retailers themselves.
“Re-cooling is different than precooling,” according to Jim Still, founder and president of Global Cooling Inc., which invented and manufactures both the Jet-Ready and Rapid-Cool pre-coolers and re-coolers. Global's factory is located at the Philadelphia Navy Yard industrial complex, near PHL airport and all the ports of Philadelphia and South Jersey.
“With precooling, usually a large amount of refrigeration capacity is needed in conjunction with the forced-air system or tunnel, because of the need to remove all of the field heat from the produce. With re-cooling, we are only removing the heat gained by bringing the commodity back up from ideal storage temperature to one at which the methyl bromide is effective, according to the USDA requirements. Often, this re-cooling refrigeration load is only 10 to 15 degrees Fahrenheit, instead of the 40 to 50 degrees we have to deal with when fully precooling. In almost all instances, one or several of our Jet-Ready instant PreCoolers can be put into operation for re-cooling, and no additional refrigeration equipment is needed.
For a very, very small investment, a cold storage operator can get into the re-cooling business almost overnight.” DLJ Produce in Long Beach, California, is using three Jet Pre-Coolers to re-cool berries this season, after having started with re-cooling Chilean grapes last year.
For more information:
Jim Still
Global Cooling Inc.
Tel: +1-610-248-9800
Email: Solutions@Pre-Coolers.net
www.Pre-Coolers.net