ISTA standard supports umbrella for quick-frozen food transport packaging

At present, in the face of frequent food safety issues, people have paid special attention to food hygiene and safety. However, people pay special attention to the health and safety of food itself, and often ignore the new safety problems that foods produce during transportation. Quick-frozen foods require strict packaging testing of their shipping packaging.

Transportation safety of frozen foods

Quick-frozen foods are frozen foods that are processed after rapid pre-treatment of foods that require quick-freezing at a rapid low temperature (generally below –18 °C). The biggest feature is that they can be maintained completely in a low temperature environment. The original quality of the food maximizes the nutritional content of the food without the need for any preservatives or additives.

The production and marketing process of quick-frozen foods can be summarized as follows: processing, packaging, storage, transportation, storage, and sales. The frozen foods are guaranteed to be in a coherent low temperature environment (typically –18 to –20 °C) throughout the process, and different types of foods have different low temperature requirements.

Test requirements for transport packaging of quick-frozen foods

Before conducting safety tests on quick-frozen food packaging, it is necessary to fully analyze the actual transportation environment of the frozen food to determine which individual test is needed.

When analyzing the actual transportation environment of frozen food, the transfer and handling process of the frozen food transportation package cannot be ignored. If the continuous low temperature environment is defined as the “frozen” process, the transportation process is defined as the “chemical” process, then the frozen food The actual transportation environment can be simply described as: freezing (production storage) → chemical (transportation) → freezing (transportation and distribution) → chemical (transportation) → frozen (sales sales) process.

Repeated conversion of the freezing and chemical processes is prone to frost, and for corrugated boxes, the change in humidity will cause the performance of the corrugated box to be attenuated, so the corrugated box needs to be tested for compression resistance. Transportation and handling may cause damage to transportation packaging due to vibration, drop or impact, so it is necessary to carry out relevant vibration or drop test on quick-frozen food.

Quick-frozen dumplings

There are two main types of quick-frozen dumplings sold in the store: one is bulk packaging in bags, and the other is packaging with blister trays. Quick-frozen dumplings are usually produced on a fixed-point basis, then distributed nationwide, and finally retailed in major stores. From packaging to sales, quick-frozen dumplings generally go through the following processes: frozen storage, shipping and unloading, refrigerated truck transportation, receiving and unloading, frozen storage, shipping and unloading, refrigerated truck transportation and distribution, store receiving and loading, and store shelves.

Quick-frozen food manufacturers need to fully understand the transportation environment of the products when selecting the test packaging standards for their products, and then use the ISTA Project 4AB standard test plan online interactive center to obtain a test plan for reference, in addition to the actual situation of the enterprise. And the requirements for product transportation and packaging, develop a set of unique transport packaging test standards, and monitor and adjust the transportation environment of the products to ensure that the test standards meet the actual transportation environment requirements.

　　 The above content is selected from the 8th issue of “ Printing Technology ·Packaging and Decoration” of Keyin Media in 2012. For more journal content, please pay attention to the journal channel.