>PRESS RELEASE

Freezing Strawberries
And Freezer Burning Meat

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Freezing food can lead to problems, it can alter its texture and its appearance - often making it look unappealing, even unsaleable.  Some refrigerated foods, particularly meats, fish, pizzas and frozen meals, form unsightly dry brown stains and fuzzy, greyish-white spots.  The cause is dehydration and oxidation as water and oxygen vapours permeate through the packaging. Versaperm's latest ISO 9001 VI meter allows you to measure these and choose packaging materials that overcome your produce's specific problems.

Packaging needs to protect against both freezer burn and to extend a food's shelf life – sadly these two needs are often contradictory so compromises usually need to be made.

Although most plasticised packaging is a good barrier against liquid water, some materials such as cellulose, EVOH and PVOH, are so poor at this when it comes to water vapour that they might as well not be there at all.  This leads to freezer burn.  Surprisingly, even the manufacturing processes used to make the packaging can make a drastic difference to performance, sometimes reducing it to a quarter of its original value.

The only way to overcome the problem is to test and optimise the packaging.  Versaperm specialises in this and not only manufactures the specialist equipment needed but additionally offers a laboratory testing service to measure it.

The equipment is versatile, fast, reliable and gives accurate results - usually in the Parts Per Million (PPM) range and it can be used to test virtually any type of packaging with, at most, minimal training. 

Note: the colour changes result from chemical changes in the food's pigment and though undesirable, freezer burn itself does not make food unsafe, it merely causes dry spots in foods.   Freezing does, however reduce the time it takes for food to spoil after being defrosted. 

ENDS

Please send any sales enquiries to Christopher Roberts, Versaperm Limited ,
10 Rawcliffe House, Howarth Road, Maidenhead, Berkshire, SL6 1AP, UK, Tel: +44 1628 777668,
e.mail info@versaperm.co.uk Web http://www.versaperm.co.uk

For further Press Information please contact Gerry Palmer @ the Palmer & Rose Partnership. Tel 01494 637499, fax 0871 900 3898 e.mail gerry@palmer-rose.co.uk.