"Vegetables easily spoil. This means that there is a high demand for their proper storage, packaging, and transport. Data shows that the cost price of vegetable transport in China is high and so is the damage rate. The damage rate of fresh vegetables during transport in developed countries is 5%-15%, while in China it can be as much as 30%-40%. In other words, every year around 37 thousand tons of fruit and vegetables spoil during transport. We could feed 200 million people with that amount." This is according to Andy Lau of Dongguan City Wanjia Machinery Co Ltd.
"There are many reasons for this enormous waste of food, such as the distribution of information, long-distance transport, and vegetable-preservation technologies."
Harvested vegetables
"The preservation practices of Chinese farmers and vegetable traders is not yet up to standard. Keeping food fresh is not a priority. This is the reason that the damage rate of vegetables during transport is relatively high, which leads to both a waste of good food and economic loss. The majority of vegetable farmers currently use traditional refrigeration methods. After the harvested fruit comes off the fields, it is pre-cooled in large volumes or directly transported to the market in refrigerated trucks. The pre-cooling process in refrigerated warehouses takes at least 4-6 hours, which means that the vegetables initially continue to respire and go through other changes. Furthermore, the harvested vegetables carry residual heat from the field. This accelerates decomposition. The same goes for the cooling process in refrigerated trucks. The vegetables continue to spoil during long transport and the product quality deteriorates."
Harvest and post-harvest flow chart
"Therefore, after the vegetables are harvested, their temperature must quickly be lowered. To achieve this it is vital that vegetable respiration is restrained in a short amount of time, while the freshness of the vegetables is largely preserved."
Vacuum cooler
"Of course, vacuum cooling also has other advantages over traditional cooling methods, for example: vacuum coolers can improve the efficiency of farm work. It only takes 25 minutes to cool the vegetables, which is 12 times faster than traditional cooling methods. Furthermore, vacuum coolers are not limited by harvest time and weather conditions. Vegetables can still be harvested under poor weather conditions and quickly cooled with the vacuum cooler, then transported in refrigerated trucks to the market and sold. This will further increase economic efficiency."
Andy Lau - Manager
Dongguan Wanjia Machinery Co.,Ltd
Company website: http://www.wjvacuumcooling.com
Fax number: + 86 769 8162 1817
Telephone number: +86 189 2685 9530
E-mail addres: andy_wjcold@hotmail.com