Fiskekroken Deepchills

The new system offers pre-chilling in the CO2 tank and chilling tank; chilling in the bleed-out tank after gutting and then box packing for shipping. Slurry ice is automatically poured at preset time intervals to the three different ice delivery points. There is a fourth delivery point at the salmon-packing station using a deepchill Dry Ice Crystal Filling Station.

Over 7.5 hours at the CO2 and chilling tanks, the fish quickly cools from 14C to approximately 4C. Further on, the gutted fish is moved from 4C to -1C and then packed in styrofoam boxes for the deepchill Dry Ice Crystal Filling Station, where each 20 kg box is filled with 4 kg of dry deepchill ice crystals in seconds, at the flick of a switch. The first of its kind, this Dry Ice Filling Station takes slurry ice and converts it into dry ice crystals for packing. The small, round, free-flowing crystals provide excellent cooling and protection, and do not damage delicate fish surfaces. It can handle different size boxes and crystal and ice sizes.

Plant manager Johan Andreassen says they ship up to 40 tonnes of salmon a day by truck throughout Northern Europe. “We have a ‘Use Before’ date of 14 days, so the ice has a lot of cooling capacity to last that length of time. The customer base here is very demanding and the Sunwell ice gives us that quality.” Fiskekroken process some 4000-5000 tonnes of salmon per annum.