Star Refrigeration scales up seafood processor chilling package

16-Jul-2014 - Last updated on 18-Jul-2014 at 13:12 GMT

Pinneys, a Scottish seafood processor, has installed a custom refrigeration package from Star Refrigeration.

Seafood processor has Pinneys turned to Star Refrigeration for an upgraded refrigeration plant and chilling tunnel package to accommodate expanded product offerings and growing demand.

Pinneys of Scotland has upgraded its refrigeration equipment with an upgraded system, created and installed by Star Refrigeration and partner firm Starfrost. The equipment consists of a turnkey refrigeration plant and chilling tunnel package, customized to meet the seafood producer’s production needs.

Custom equipment

James Ward, Star Refrigeration’s director of sales for the food market, said Star and Starfrost worked closely with the Pinneys team to tailor the system.

“We took care of every aspect of the Pinneys project, from design through to delivery and maintenance,” he said.

Product expansion

Pinneys needed to accommodate expanded product ranges transferred from another company processing facility. Specifically, the company needed to increase capacity for an added line of premium, steam-cooked seafoods, such as shrimp, lobster, and crab.

In addition to expanding capacity, Pinneys was looking to upgrade its technology from a manual blast chilling process, to a more flexible inline system.

Equipment service

Taking 12 weeks from end to end, Star and Starfrost installed the custom-tooled system at the Pinneys plant. The equipment team supplied the machinery, offloaded the equipment, installed it, commissioned it, and handled site management throughout the project.

The package consists of a Starfrost Starlite HT hybrid tunnel chiller, and a bespoke direct expansion refrigeration plant designed and built by Star. The plant reportedly provides 123kW of cooling to the Starfrost HT, which has a chilling capacity of 1,500 kg per hour.

The customized plant also features an air-cooled condenser with human-machine interface designed to boost efficiency. Control features include electronic expansion valves and variable speed drive on the condenser fans; the fan’s aluminum fins are coated with polyester to protect them from the sea air.

Pinneys, a division of Young’s Seafood, supplies smoked Scottish salmon, premium wet fish, and seafood products to a number of UK-based retailers.