Taking care of HVAC hygiene is one of the most important things a food producer can do to ensure a hygienic manufacturing environment.
Yet so many forget about it.
The emphasis is placed on the mechanical side of HVAC, but we often forget about the hygienic side.
Little things build up.
- A dead sparrow inside the filter room starts harbouring bacteria.
- A leaking ceiling creates a puddle.
- Pathogens and soil build-up on the dirty side, so more pathogens and soil pass through the filters into the clean factory environment.
- Filter holding banks become so distorted over time they no longer fit the filters snugly.
- Drains in the fan room can block up, and overflow. Mould starts to grow.
- The fins in the heat exchange coil break down, paint in the fan room starts to peel; paint flakes and tiny pieces of aluminium enter the air stream.
- Ducting starts to corrode and the air rushing through it sucks dirty air in from the ceiling space.
Remember, lots of this is on the clean side of the filters. All this foreign matter enters the factory and makes its way to the food product.
The more pathogens that enter the factory, the more money is wasted on reactive cleaning.
At Presco Environmental, we have been maintaining hygienic factories for New Zealand’s world-class food producers for the past 15 years. We take a proactive and holistic approach to factory hygiene and have traced many food safety problems in factories back to unhygienic HVAC systems. At FoodTech PackTech we will be showcasing our full HVAC service package, and two technologies exclusive to us in New Zealand: Radic8 air decontamination units, and Needlepoint Bi-polar ionisation (small units installed in your HVAC system).
Visit us on stand 3129 to talk about how to most effectively keep your HVAC system hygienic.
