Steripure features an article in this month’s Ingredients Insights edition
With a big section on food safety in general, and on the microbiological risk on dried fruits and nuts in particular, this month’s Ingredients Insights edition was strongly matching Steripure’s business activity.
While the European Food Industry still struggles to establish a coherent framework for quality control of natural low moisture food ingredients such as tree nuts and seeds, Steripure is offering state of the art, 5-log steam sterilization services since 6 years, operating with unique vacuum saturated steam batch injection equipment optimized for the efficient treatment of heat and humidity sensitive products.
>>> Get more details from our online entry in the Ingredients Network here <<<
Steripure was founded in 2012 by Olivier Bourgois, following the vision that the agglomeration of industries, the more and more sophisticated means of product traceability, increasingly widespread media coverage of food scandals and rising conscience about microbiological risk on low moisture food ingredients will profoundly change the market’s need for food safety management.
Indeed, closer monitoring of food imports and consumer goods by health authorities and more stringent regulatory oversight have led to increases in the number of recalls and identification of a larger number of food borne illness outbreaks. Recalls and outbreaks carry a huge cost not only in direct recall cost and human illness costs but they are also damaging to brands and entire product categories as a whole.
An undetected presence of pathogenic bacteria or a poorly controlled bacterial load can affect the entire product distribution chain and lead to recalls, non-conformities, and significant brand image spoilage or consumer disaffection.
Over and beyond regulatory requirements in France and Europe, the market often demands compliance to stringent specifications for producers and importers. Especially big global players such as Nestlé, Mondelez, and others who are striving towards a zero risk policy on all ingredients identified as potential risks in their value creation chain – for example, all natural ingredients like tree nuts, seeds and spices.
Steripure offers its expertise, skills and equipment to overcome and manage these constraints and risks, to diversify the possibilities of sourcing and to provide access to new markets.
The project started with a pasteurisation installation in Eguilles, France, where the company was able to demonstrate the performance of this innovative process by treating products for several European customers. Steripure was amongst the first to invest into high-end technology developed by Napasol, a Swiss company whose process is based on combining vacuum and saturated steam. Olivier Bourgois was familiar with this technology, it having been used for treating vanilla products in the company Eurovanille which he founded with his brother before.
In 2013 Steripure expanded into a facility in Rousset, France. There, additional technology was installed to meet growing customer demand, notably two static pasteurisation lines Statisol 50 and Statisol 600 and one rotating unit Rotosol 60. In order to meet the expectations of big account buyers, third party validations for 5 log germ reduction were successfully conducted on the static and rotating units, strictly applying the only valid framework for kill-step validation as prescribed by the Almond Board of California under the Food and Drugs Administration.
Today, Steripure has moved into a large new industrial site in Gardanne (still France), designed and constructed uniquely for state of the art pasteurisation services, inspired by six years of experience as well as the essence of all customer and partner audits.