Miami, Florida, U.S.A.-based Searfarers has purchased and installed a new Hiperbaric 300 high-pressure processing (HPP) machine to facilitate its shift to processing 100 percent of its crab products via HPP.
The processor, importer, and marketer of fresh and frozen seafood decided to fully commit to the process after nine consumers were affected by vibrio in Maryland in July 2018. The Maryland Department of Health were able to trace the outbreak back to unpasteurized crab meat from Venezuela. Previous to the outbreak, Seafarers was using HPP on 30 to 40 percent of its crab products, but CEO Willy Rosell decided to fully commit to the process afterwards for 100 percent of his company’s pre-cooked, fresh crab.
Seafarers' HPP processing formula applies cold water at extremely high pressures (up to 6,000 bar or 87,000 psi), which neutralizes pathogenic and spoilage microorganisms while keeping intact the organoleptic properties of the crab meat. The process extends the overall shelf life of crab meat to 21 days while maintaining the more of the crab’s flavor, its nutrient and vitamin content, and eliminating the need to use additives, Rosell said.
“This new technology retains all of the nutrients, vitamins, and antioxidants found naturally in food and drastically enhances the overall food safety of our crab meat,” he said.
With the installation of the Hiberbaric machine, all of Seafarers’ imported fresh pre-cooked crab meat sold under its Blue Treasure and Poseidon brands will undergo the HPP process before being released for distribution into the market.
“Our goal is to provide our customers with natural, fresh and nutritious products meeting high quality standards to meet the needs of domestic and foreign consumers,” Rosell said. “For us, [HPP] represents a great achievement for the seafood industry around the world. We are very excited to make this new and innovative technology available to customers and producers of all different kinds of seafood.”
In an interview with SeafoodSource at the 2018 Seafood Expo North America in Boston, Massachusetts, Seafarers Vice President of Sales David Casas said the firm is looking to become a category leader in crabmeat, and that it satisfies a demand from the firm’s existing customers for a one-stop shopping experience. The company now imports fresh crabmeat out of Venezuela, pasteurized blue swimming crab from Indonesia, and pasteurized red swimming crab from China he said.
“We expect to be a big player in the crabmeat category, and given our portfolio of products, it was important to add in a major category so that our customers can get all their major seafood needs filled by us,” he said. “We’re known for being very strong on finfish, which is what we started in, but they can now buy crab, tuna, mahi, and salmon from us as well.”
The company was able to expand after it built a new 56,000-square-foot facility in Medley, Florida, with refrigerated and frozen storage capacity of more than 20 million pounds of product.
Photo courtesy of Hiperbaric
