Shelf Life of Fresh Food

Extending the shelf life of fresh food has quite been a primary cause for the food industry, especially for raw food supplies. Some fresh foods that need shelf life extensions are meat, fish, vegetables, ham, and cooked dishes, which normally have a lifetime of less than a week and are only stored by simple packing and refrigeration methods. Not having proper storage and packaging affects the ability of a business to push the limits of their sales while having in mind the possibility of unprofitable product wastage is also another case.

There are some traditional ways of extending the shelf life of food that has been used throughout history, such as smoking, pickling, freezing, and canning. Food manufacturers benefit from these methods to reduce wastage, maintain the products on sale for much longer, and extend product distribution reached. Every method does increase the shelf life of fresh goods exponentially, but with sacrifice. It also eliminated most of the content and even the original form from its raw material look to a finished product.

But the great importance for consumers is to promote healthy and safer maintenance of their consumptions which has also extended to the concern of retailers. By this, the market demands more products without preservatives or some additives just to keep their food from deteriorating. Most of the traditional process includes the said cases, while some just basically change the primary flavours onto something less natural.

Vacuum Packing

The method is to seal away a product from most of the air, which then allows the pack to shrink while maintaining the vacuum with the support of plastic materials. The process maintains the natural content of fresh food and even extends its shelf life to almost a month without early deterioration and keeping moisture out of the fresh goods.

Vacuum packing has significantly saved a lot of food businesses by extending the shelf life of their products to a maximum and changing their distribution to further markets, and increasing their storage capacity since shrunk packaging creates more space for storage that will allow more production that means more available stocks for sale.

There are ways to do vacuum packing, such as the manual way or simply getting an automatic vacuum packing machine to reduce the work to a minimum. The manual way is often used by households to vacuum-pack their fresh goods since most of the time, the products they purchase are not vacuum sealed. The process of manually vacuum packing requires a lot of work and time, depending on the individual initiating the process, as this method requires sucking the air out of the container where the fresh goods are placed using basic tools like a pump.

While an automatic vacuum packing machine only takes seconds to seal, the process reduces human resources and time needed to create a finished product. This kind of machine also comes with an automatic function that can be very flexible in different kinds of fresh food. There are also a variety of machines that are indeed useful for industrial use that allows a batch of products to be vacuum-sealed in one go.

Vacuum Packing Machines

Vacuum packing is the most outstanding process that most of the best food manufacturers have provided with vacuum packing machines to drastically increase the speed rate and supplying capacity of their production activities. Different kinds of vacuum packing machines have now been developed in a variety of models that features a flexible computer-to-human interface with some unique functions and niche that can adjust and work out with many different food products.

The existence of vacuum packing machines has not only prioritized packaging alone but also indicated sous-vide cooking as important along with the process in approach to support the development of food manufacturers, specifically in meat and produces company. Sous-vide cooking is a method for pre-cooking or simply treating food with partial cooking and marinating to improve the flavour and be vacuum sealed right away before a consumer even receives the fresh goods. This method of packaging and cooking ensures the taste and nutrients of the food are at the highest level while increasing the shelf life in the fridge up to weeks without worrying about freezer burn.

Benefits of Vacuum Packaging

The method comes in very handy, especially on a bigger scale of mass production. The benefits of industrial vacuum packaging can be specific to its function and ability to become intuitively flexible in the food industry.

The following are some of the best benefits of having a vacuum packaging machine at work:

• Shelf life is extended by at least twice compared to traditional packing.
• Reach out to further markets and retailers with the help of the extended shelf life.
• The process is cheaper with the absence of additives for preservation.
• Sous-vide cooking can now be easier to improve product quality and development.
• Fresh food has a better barrier to contamination.
• Reduces the time needed to manufacture a finished product.
• Profitability for business users will gradually increase by reducing costs from wastage, returns, packaging, and labour hours.

Vacuum packaging can be pleasant to have in a food business regarding its benefits and opportunities for business development. With the flexibility of vacuum packaging machines, small food businesses to mass-producing manufacturers can enjoy all benefits to its capabilities.