Tomato ketchup is a high demand product in the fast food industry and in the family consumption.
It is used with various foods like French fries, burgers, chips, sandwiches as well as a base for other sauces (barbecue, chilly etc).
The global ketchup market is growing rapidly and it is expected to reach 2,5 billion Euro by 2015.
Modern ketchup (and sauces based on tomato) plants are automatized and flexible in order to change rapidly the type of recipe in production.
A careful hygienic design allows very long production periods, reducing to the minimum the stoppages for the plant cleaning.
A typical plant include the following main sections:
1. Tomato paste drum emptying and dilution. The dilution to the desired brix is carried out in-line for faster processing, to avoid the product aeration and . An electronic refractometer and a mass flow meter are controlling the process.
2. Sugar dissolving unit. The sugar feeding is carried out under dust suction hood and is complete with filter. High speed pumps provide a fast and homogenous dissolving. The syrup is then pasteurized, filtered and buffered. The line is complete with sugar magnetic filter, refractometer and flowmeter.
3. Vinegar dosing system complete with flowmeter.
4. Cooking pans for the rehydration of vegetables to be added to the sauces.
5. Salt, purees, starch, gum, spices feeding group.
6. Blending line with valves manifold for up to 7 ingredients, blending tanks with recirculation screw pumps, refractometer, ph meter.
7. Deareation, homogenization and pasteurization group including high efficiency deaerator with surface condenser, double inline filter, high pressure homogenizer with inverter and tube in tube pasteurizer made in AISI316L.
8. The deareated, homogenized and pasteurized sauce is then in line mixed with rehydrated vegetables before being routed to a nitrogen blanket tank feeding the filling line.
9. A very efficient CIP system
, completely automatic. Plants of this type are equipped with a very sophisticated instrumentation and automatic system with a centralized touch screen supervisor with Teleservice.
Bertuzzi Food Processing an Italian leading manufacturer of equipment and plants for food processing, established in 1936 has gained a wide experience in the design and supply plants for ketchup and related sauces production.
Bertuzzi has recently commissioned a ketchup and other sauces plant with a capacity of 13 ton / hour in Russia, one of the largest European plants of this type.
