Poultry, meat & seafood

Bacon

People say "everything is better with bacon". But what is bacon? Bacon is a type of salt-cured pork that is prepared from several different cuts of meat, typically from the pork belly or from back cuts. The meat is often smoked before it’s packed and sold in the supermarket.

To make the perfect bacon, everything has to be in balance; that’s where the legendary GEA technology know-how comes in. It’s not what you do, it’s how you do it that matters. And GEA does it right.

The secret is ultimate control over the injection process

The brine injection system GEA MultiJector 2mm is dedicated for precise brining of bacon, featuring 2mm OptiFlex needles that promote a very tight injection pattern and allow for exceptional injection accuracy. Thanks to maximum ‘time-in meat’, a GEA injection precision technique based on the specific combination of stroke height and injection cycle time, the needles remain in the product longer during injection, which results in better brine uptake and more even distribution, significantly increasing product quality and consistency, efficiency and yield.

The injector is seamlessly integrated with GEA’s brine preparation equipment, GEA SuperChill brine chiller and the GEA MultiShakers that remove excess brine from both sides of the product, close needle marks and activate proteins, ultimately resulting in low standard deviation during production and thus increasing quality, yield and profit.

The secret is authentic in-line smoking

For 25 years the GEA Cookstar has been the leading cooker for the food industry. Today it has evolved to provide three-phase cooking that can cook any product in virtually any style. Combining the double spiral oven technology with the SuperHeatSmoke concept enables food processors with in-line production to produce and brand bacon products with a CleanSmoke label.

The secret is balanced freezing with perfect slicing & packing

The CALLIFREEZE™ system, for GEA’s S-Tec range of spiral freezers, calibrates the freezer parameters by continuously measuring the level of frozenness of the product at the freezer exit. This ensures that products are frozen precisely to the manufacturer’s requirements, preparing them ideally for slicing and providing the best possible quality with the minimum of power. 

Absolute hygiene, consistent product quality and perfect presentation is essential for sliced bacon that will stand out on a supermarket shelf. GEA slicers and packers create bacon products that are as attractive as they are appealing: stacked, shingled, interleaved or in chunks all with GEA precision and product weight control for maximum yield and minimum wastage.

The secret is in a complete in-line bacon process

Combining all these operations into an inline production concept will give the ultimate control from meat reception to consumer packages. This new inline production concept for bacon, where all process steps are matched and seamlessly integrated, helps you bring the highest quality and accuracy to the art of bacon making.

The secret is the overall picture

Discover the complete bacon and ham injection line at GEA customer Zijdenbos. From the production of brine up to the massaging and tumbling process is done by GEA equipment. Another GEA machine that already performs well for more than 25 years instilled confidence in the future collaboration with GEA. As Director Operations says “It's the overall picture. A lot of know-how, the right guys and great machinery.”

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