The processing workshop at three o'clock in the morning still smelled of the sea. Boss Li reached out and touched the salmon packaging box that had just come off the line, and turned to our technical director Lao Zhou and said: "This touch is like touching the Alaskan glacier." The metaphor of the owner of this seafood processing factory has become the best advertising slogan for our factory's fresh cold chain packaging solution.
In late autumn last year, Boss Li broke into our exhibition hall with a half-melted iced gift box. His batch of ready-to-eat sea cucumbers shipped from Dalian to Guangzhou was rejected by the supermarket because the label fell off due to condensation on the packaging. "It is said that you are good at cold chain packaging for fresh food. Can you help me out?" The sample box he slapped on the table was still dripping.
Our technical team spent three days in the cold storage. We found that the traditional foam box would produce a "breathing effect" when the temperature difference alternates, just like covering the seafood with a wet quilt. The redesigned customized packaging machine solution uses three-dimensional wind curtain technology to allow the cold air to wrap the product like a moat. On the night of the test, Boss Li stared at the monitoring screen in a military coat, watching the salmon on the conveyor belt automatically complete the whole process of vacuuming, nitrogen injection, and ice film coating, and suddenly said: "This machine can keep fresh better than my wife!"
What really makes this fresh cold chain packaging solution outstanding is the millimeter battle of precise temperature control. During debugging, it was found that the salmon fat layer would produce amber lines between -2¡æ and 0¡æ, which requires extremely high adaptation to cold chain logistics. We added a semiconductor temperature control module to the packaging machine, and now even the temperature fluctuations during the bumpy carriage can be controlled within the preservation threshold. Zhang, the transport supervisor, smacked his lips as he looked at the real-time temperature curve: "You guys have equipped seafood with a portable air conditioner!"
The breakthrough in controlled atmosphere preservation technology was the most dramatic. That day, Boss Li had a sudden idea and said he wanted to try to lock in the "freshly caught seafood flavor." We adjusted the gas ratio overnight and raised the mixing accuracy of nitrogen, carbon dioxide and oxygen to two decimal places. Half a month later, the Guangzhou distributor called and said, "What kind of fairy air did you fill the sea cucumber with? The customer said he smelled the smell of waves when he unpacked it!"
What I am most proud of is the return visit last month. Walking into Boss Li's newly built intelligent workshop, twenty of our packaging machines are putting "ice armor" on Arctic sweet shrimp. The thickness error of the ice coat for each shrimp does not exceed the diameter of a hair, which not only ensures the refrigeration time, but also does not increase the transportation load too much. Boss Li pointed to the container being loaded and said, "Now my sweet shrimp can run half of China, and the ice crystals are still in the shape of a hexagram when unpacking."
This case gave us a new understanding of fresh cold chain packaging. Once when we were making a plan for a highland ranch, we found that traditional ice packs would vaporize prematurely in a low-pressure environment. The guys in the technical department developed a phase-change cold storage material, and now the yak meat of that customer can wear "temperature armor" to cross the snow-capped mountains at an altitude of 5,000 meters. When the rancher Tashi came to inspect, he held the frozen meat and chanted, saying that we had blessed the packaging machine.
Recently, Boss Li brought a new challenge - the transportation and packaging of live king crabs. Looking at the big guys with bared teeth and claws blowing bubbles in the temporary holding pond, Lao Zhou bit his pencil and said: "This is to build a mobile underwater world for crabs!" But who made our factory's fresh cold chain packaging team love to bite hard bones? I heard that a buffer system that can simulate tidal cycles has been developed, and even the curvature of the crab claws has been calculated into the anti-collision design.
Standing on the brightly lit production line, watching the glittering packaging machine put crystal armor on seafood, I suddenly remembered the words of the old factory manager: "Fresh cold chain packaging is a race against time and a wrestling match with temperature." All those nights and frozen hands turned into confidence when the customer sent the receipt. After all, when the housewife opened the express box and saw the salmon fat layer still glowing orange-red like the rising sun, it was our best technical certificate.
