Realizing a cooling tunnel for poultry at Heijs Food Products

Heijs Food Products (HFP) is the specialist in Europe in the field of chicken fillet and thigh/leg meat products. With 20 years of customer experience in the Foodservice, Convenience Food and Meal Industry, HFP have tailored their production processes and product development to these sectors. They are a leading independent party that delivers what the market demands in this area.

Geerlofs Refrigeration was contacted when Heijs Food Products had the ambition to enlarge their capacity. Air cooling was demanded instead of water cooling to ensure high quality poultry. Geerlofs was asked to create an optimal cold transfer and high energy efficiency.

To cool down 9.000 birds per hour, a cooling tunnel was designed with a surface of 450 m² and a length of 1.6 km. In just one hour time the produce is cooled down to the required temperature. An ammonia pump refrigeration system is used for the purpose, controlled by Gispro^®, the application specific Geerlofs software package. Around it in the tunnel an air distribution is built using Gisopanel^® panels which create several pressure chambers. The cooling tunnel is in use since halfway 2023.