May/June 2021 - 20

FACILITY OPERATIONS
CLIMATE CONTROL
Shutting the door on
product quality problems
NEXT-GENERATION DOOR SYSTEMS HELP CONTROL
ENERGY COSTS WHILE KEEPING PRODUCE SAFE
By Josh Brown
Guest columnist
A PRODUCE PROCESSING operation
can involve at least three subenvironments
under its roof. At
minimum, fruits and vegetables at
the docks come into the processing
facility from the field and shipped.
In between, produce can be chopped,
cooked, frozen, cleaned, bottled or
processed into a new product.
Protecting food quality along the
material-handling chain, which
can have heavy traffic, in such
environments requires the right kind of
doors. When adding other non-produce
ingredients, the process becomes even
more complicated.
The goal for these operations is
preventing the airborne pathogens that
can ride along with the raw material
coming in through the receiving
dock door from becoming part of the
packaged product when it goes out the
door. At the same time, certain areas
within the facility need to maintain
temperature levels to attain desired
product quality levels.
Here are the conditions that exist in
the processing plant that management
needs to address in order to prevent
cross-contamination and protect
product quality.
Keeping pathogens in their place
In many cases, product arrives on
the receiving dock raw from the field
with the dirt, contamination and microorganisms
that exist in the outside
world and are ready to go airborne
20 MAY/JUNE 2 0 21
 High-speed fabric rollup door provides quick doorway access on walls with tight space.
once picked up by building positive or
negative pressures.
While we're on the topic of invaders,
pests can be a problem. The 8-by-10foot
doorways at receiving docks are
rarely closed in busy facilities, as one
truck after another pulls up to unload.
Though the open end of the truck is
enveloped with dock seals and shelters,
there still can be gaps which enable
entrance for insects. No processing
process is totally closed-circuit and, at
some point, there is product exposure
to the atmosphere.
For these intruders, the high-speed
doors leading into the processing area
prevent most of these contaminants
from going any further than the dock.
Tight sealing where the door meets the
doorway also blocks these attacks on
product quality.
Keeping cool or freezing
Cold air is a valuable commodity
in processing operations to prevent
pathogen growth and product spoilage,
but it is costly as well. To protect both
the product and the energy budget, door
design should guard against energy
loss. That means the doors leading into
processing operations must provide a
tight seal. For freezer environments,

May/June 2021

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