Flexibility of production with Tetra Pak High Shear Mixers

Aug 14, 2023

Tetra Pak, experts in food processing, provide product diversity with its Tetra Pak High Shear Mixer across multiple sectors including dairy, beverages, and prepared foods. Adam McCleery writes.

Tetra Pak has a particular focus on developing solutions and technologies such as its highly efficient High Shear Mixer, which improves on traditional products while continuing to innovate on new methods.

Any food manufacturer or producer knows the importance of mixing in the production process and through technological innovation, Tetra Pak continues to help its customers get this important step right every time.

Processing key components sales manager for Tetra Pak Oceania, Andrew McCullagh, said the innovative design of the Tetra Pak High Shear Mixer makes it a valuable asset across multiple sectors of the food and beverage industry.

“The versatile range of products that can be produced on the Tetra Pak High Shear Mixer is one of its strengths. The same machine has the ability to make hummus, dips, sauces, and soups, as well as other cold emulsions such as mayonnaise.”

Mixing ingredients the correct way is critical for food and beverage producers, whether that involves dissolving, emulsifying, dispersing powders or liquids, and incorporating solids.

Tetra Pak has spent three decades continually innovating its product offerings to improve this process.

As a result, the company has a wide range of High Shear Mixers that give a manufacturer or producer greater control over the mixing process ensuring a better, more consistent product.

Every detail of the mixing process can be fine-tuned to achieve the quality characteristics you want your product to have. Once you have achieved the desired result for your product, the control on the mixer can replicate that same process every time,” said McCullagh.

Some of the more prominent features of the Tetra Pak High Shear Mixer, including product diversity, is its ability to increase productivity and output.

“It has a patented dynamic shear feature which allows powerful mixing but also the ability to be gentle on the product when you need to,” said McCullagh.

“That flexibility allows it to work across a range of operations that some of these products need.

“For example, sometimes you need a smooth texture for products like hummus and other plant-based spreads, and sometimes you need to gently mix in some flavour. This allows you to do both easily.

“The machine has heating and cooling integrated within the mixer including direct steam injection. It also has vacuum capability, so you are able to introduce powders, liquids and other ingredients without having to open the vessel.”

“When the powders come in via vacuum, they instantly disperse into the high shear mixing head. If you compare this to a kitchen blender, instead of pouring product in the top where it can clump up and float around you are injecting it at the mixing head, ensuring effective mixing right away.”

“There’s also our patented double sharp agitator which allows you to make high viscosity products and still have effective mixing,” said McCullagh.

“Customers can add on ingredients handling options like a bin lifter which is useful for large fruit or particles that can’t draw in under vacuum, or bulk powder tipping stations with dust extraction.”

The Tetra Pak High Shear Mixer provides additional protection against a breakdown of the emulsifying process, which is a known pain point for food producers.

“You must be controlled in forming the emulsion and you don’t want to break it. The perfect mayonnaise texture occurs when the oil droplet size is reduced but then the mixing intensity must reduce to preserve the texture. This technology provides better control and the ability to do it at pace,” said McCullagh.

This added protection against emulsification breakdown, McCullagh said, was a key feature in research and development of the Tetra Pak High Shear Mixer.

All the features needed to make mayonnaise also translates to other products like hummus, dips, soups and sauces.

Customers can use the Tetra Pak High Shear Mixer to create new products or improve their current product offering with the ability to produce faster, at a higher capacity, or with less equipment or steps than they do now. Or for products they currently make; they can do it faster, at higher capacity, or with less equipment or steps than they do now.”

Tetra Pak holds local workshops to give potential users added insight into the benefits of the Tetra Pak High Shear Mixer, along with the best ways to use it. “The key purpose of the workshops is to help customers understand what the equipment is, and how it can help them” said McCullagh.

“Seeing and touching the equipment and end products leads to a better understanding of the capabilities and opportunities for customer operations.

In addition to the local workshops, Tetra Pak has product development centres across the globe in 9 locations which are available for product development trials. Allowing customers to determine the right process and equipment without having the cost of full-scale production batches.

The Tetra Pak High Shear Mixer, along with the broad range of technologies from the company, gives greater product offerings and the flexibility to address specific production needs. From batch mixing to recirculation mixing and continuous mixing.

This also applies to the beverage sector, from plant-based drinks and smoothies to iced tea, sports drinks, and still drinks.

As well as prepared foods like puddings and custards, infant formula, hummus, fruit preparations and jams, mayonnaise, and cold emulsion mixing, tomato products, soups, sauces, and more.

These features, along with others, are all evidence of the continued innovation and improvement of products at Tetra Pak, which aims to help customers produce quality products of the same standard, every time.

Tetra Pak has built a strong reputation for helping increase productivity and output for customers and the Tetra Pak High Shear Mixer is another example of this capability.