FREEZE DRYING PLANT (3 TONS/DAY)

According to the “Food and Agriculture Organization” of the United Nations, roughly one third of the food produced in the world for human consumption every year — approximately 1.3 billion tones — gets lost or wasted. Food losses and waste amounts to roughly US$ 680 billion in industrialized countries and US$ 310 billion in developing countries. Fruits and vegetables, plus roots and tubers have the highest wastage rates of any food.

Global quantitative food losses and waste per year are roughly 30% for cereals, 40-50% for root crops, fruits and vegetables, 20% for oil seeds, meat and dairy plus 35% for fish.

Every year, consumers in rich countries waste almost as much food (222 million tonnes) as the entire net food production of sub-Saharan Africa (230 million tonnes). Per capita waste by consumers is between 95-115 kg a year in Europe and North America, while consumers in sub- Saharan Africa, south and south-eastern Asia, each throw away only 6-11 kg a year.

In recent years there has been increased demand and objective necessity of building a plant for freeze-dried foods in Bulgaria. Lyophilized foods can replace traditional preservation, but without the use of preservatives. The method has the following advantages:

• Fully preserved taste, nutritional, organoleptic properties and vitamins, without any harmful preservatives and additives. The dry-heat procedure retains only 50-60% of the original nutritional properties;

• Saving the form and color of freeze-dried products, unlike drying with hot air;
• Durability of storage under ambient conditions (room temperature) 5-15 years (residual humidity up to 2-5%). No need for storage in freezers and refrigerators and related costs during this long period;
• Rapid rehydration, unlike drying with hot air;

• Packaging in hermetic quality three-layer packaging materials with aluminum intermediate layer – vacuum packing and non-oxidative environment of protective gas – nitrogen or argon.

• Saves weight and volume of the metal cans and glass jars, and up to 90% of weight of the food itself.

Fruits are most often to be freeze-dried (strawberries, wild strawberries, apples, pears, melons, apricots, peaches, kiwi, watermelon, blueberries, wild blueberries, cherries, grapes, raspberries and blackberries, sliced lemons and oranges, fruit mix); vegetables (original,