Project description
A sustainable alternative to food-drying systems
Sustainable food processing and preservation are crucial for ensuring the consumption of safe, wholesome and palatable foods. Traditional drying systems consume large amounts of energy and take a long time to dry the product, affecting look and taste. The EU-funded AIRGENEX-food project is supporting Germany-based company HARTER GmbH in developing a chamber-drying system that ensures a reliable, gentle and energy-efficient drying process. The food-drying system will use heat pump technology, which should help vastly reduce energy consumption for any drying requirements. Customised air conditioning and air routing will produce remarkably rapid and efficient results while preserving the flavours and appearance of the end product.
Objective
Harter GmbH (Harter) was founded in 1991 and is still a family-owned company. Harter is Europe-wide known as specialist for heat pump based condensation drying systems, which are applicable in various sectors. By the companies’ unique expert knowledge and the high innovative strength, Harter developed to one of the most innovative companies for drying systems and gained an excellent reputation in recent years. Within the European society, conscious and healthy nutrition as well as gentle and sustainable processing and preservation are becoming increasingly important. To perfectly meet this trend, Harter developed the worldwide unique AIRGENEX®food chamber drying system for a reliable, gentle and energy-efficient drying process. The flexible adjustable process enables perfect drying of various foods and because of the closed air circuit, aroma, appearance and bioactivity retain in the food. By using variable and low temperatures a gentle way of drying food products, which is absolutely stress-free for the products, is guaranteed. An optimum air conditioning and air routing ensure high energy and cost savings compared to competing drying technologies. Moreover, by AIRGENEX®food the valuable condensate, which contains flavour and colour, can be collected and is available for further use. The new technology primarily addresses the food sector, which is a continuously growing market with an expect CAGR of 5.6% in the common years. Besides the food sector, another promising market is the drying market for medical plants, e.g. medical cannabis, which is expected to grow rapidly at a CAGR of 21.11%. By the innovative drying technology, Harter expects to generate additional cumulative turnover of 15 million € and an increase in staff headcount of 18 employees in 2023.
Fields of science (EuroSciVoc)
CORDIS classifies projects with EuroSciVoc, a multilingual taxonomy of fields of science, through a semi-automatic process based on NLP techniques.
CORDIS classifies projects with EuroSciVoc, a multilingual taxonomy of fields of science, through a semi-automatic process based on NLP techniques.
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Programme(s)
Funding Scheme
SME-1 - SME instrument phase 1Coordinator
88167 STIEFENHOFEN
Germany
The organization defined itself as SME (small and medium-sized enterprise) at the time the Grant Agreement was signed.