The problem that the IceChilling technology addresses has industrial, economic and social aspects and that is primarily due to insufficient cooling of poultry meat from slaughtering through the prodcution chain. Poultry production is the fastest growing meat sector in the world, with over 50 billion chickens produced, and growing >2% per year. People in the industrial world eat 80 kg of meat a year on average, thereof 25-40 kg of chickens. In the UK people get >45% of their protein from chickens and at the same time about 75% of all UK chickens are infected with Camphylobacter, causing about 280.000 food poisoning cases per year. In the last 25 years the average size of slaughtered chicken has gone from about 1 kg to 2.5 kg and a faster growth rate from 10 to 5 weeks. The increased size and higher output, along with more demand for fresh meat and better hygiene has put enormous economic and technical pressure on the poultry meat industry. Poultry meat processing industries are mainly regionally located and of very different size in terms of output. The chilling rooms are typically located in the middle of the slaughter/process facilities and composed of stacks of conveyer belts, chilled by cold air or cold water spray. Therefore it is very difficult and expensive to increase the chilling power by introducing longer belts and/or increase the cold air flow, in order to cope with the increased cooling demand. Therefore, since the IceChilling technology can be added to the current belts and does not require larger facilities, it would be a highly competitive solution with much savings for the meat processor. Based on these developed solutions, ThorIce has already made the first successful steps into the international markets and its goal is to be among the leading players in ice-slurry applications world-wide.
Our goal is to bring to market a novel chilling technology, that can be added on the current conveyer belts as they carry the slaughtered chickens through the cooling chambers currently in use. Air chilling is the current industry standard, typically aimed at getting the meat temperature from 40°C to <4°C in 2 hours.
