Location: Belgium, Flanders
Project: An unprecedented water-recycling system for washing, rinsing and drying of thermal insulated containers within the Food Industry
Big food retailers use thermic insulated containers for the safe and efficient transportation of temperature-controlled food to retail stores facilities. These containers are cleaned in the logistic centers and reused countless number of times to ship food over and over again. Container cleaning is a crucial step in food operations and aspects like the effectiveness of the cleaning, the cost-efficiency of the process, the environmental impact and the water remaining in the container after the cleaning are of great importance. Optainer is an automated modular cleaning station that can be perfectly integrated into the logistic chains of food retailers. This is the first automated solution that can wash, rinse and dry food containers very fast (1’ 40’’), at low cost (around 0.5 €/container), with low energy (1 kWh/container) and low fresh water consumption (<4 l/container of fresh water). Food retailers will save money, water and energy and they neither will spend too much time cleaning containers nor will have to allocate a part of their workforce to these activities. At the same time, they will be sure that containers are perfectly cleaned and the process is automatically controlled. We are LVP Engineering and Constructions, a Belgian company bringing experience 40 years in the development and construction of machines for several industries. OPTAINER will be the flagship product of LVP Cleantec, a series of machines for the automated cleaning of insulated food containers, a field in which we are leaders. Standing out of competitive solutions, OPTAINER will foster our business (we estimate 109.1 M€ turnover in the 5th year of commercialization and 123 new jobs in the company). At the same we will reduce energy and water consumption of a process that is suboptimal and risky.
Topic: Food, Energy
Total budget: 2.590.885 €
EU Contribution: 1.813.620 €
Call ID: H2020-EIC-SMEInst-2018-2020-3