Enquire Now

04 Nov Sterilisation in the baby food industry; a crucial safety and quality issue

Posted at 11:32h in News by

Steriflow Retorts: Ensuring Quality and Safety in Baby Food Sterilisation

Steriflow retorts are essential for sterilising baby food products, extending shelf life and ensuring the quality and safety of South Africa’s most popular baby food brands. Supplied and serviced by DFS Process Solutions, these advanced autoclaves are trusted by South Africa’s largest FMCG company to deliver safe, high-quality nutrition to infants across the country.

Why Sterilise Baby Food?

Sterilising baby food is a precautionary measure to eliminate potentially dangerous bacteria and spoilage germs that could be present in the food. Babies have a less mature immune system than adults, making them more vulnerable to diseases and infections. Manufacturers therefore turn to sterilisation, particularly autoclave sterilisation. This ensures food safety by eliminating all microorganisms.

Sterilisation also offers practical advantages, such as:

  • The ability to store at room temperature
  • Easy to take away.
The Sterilisation Process:

In food processing factories, heat treatment of baby food is carried out using a high-temperature sterilisation process. One of the most commonly used processes for this application is sterilisation by superheated cascading water.

This process is particularly appreciated by manufacturers because it offers many advantages:

  • It can treat all types of packaging while maintaining their integrity and without risk of distortion, thanks to independent temperature and pressure control in the autoclave.
  • It avoids thermal shocks on glass, thus preventing breakage risks.
  • It allows excellent temperature homogeneity in the retort and consequently perfectly uniform heat treatment of the load.
  • The rotary autoclave – in addition to all the advantages related to cascading – improves the organoleptic quality of products by reducing overcooking.
Different Stages of Sterilisation:

The baby food sterilisation process includes several phases:

  • Pre-treatment: raw food materials are washed, peeled, cut, and then prepared according to your recipes.
  • Filling: foods are filled into their containers, which are then hermetically sealed, usually in glass jars, pouches, or plastic trays.
  • Sterilisation: containers are placed in the autoclave to be treated to a predetermined time/temperature schedule.
  • Cooling: products are rapidly cooled to avoid deterioration of the food’s organoleptic qualities.

What Are the Food Safety Standards?

Specific regulations apply to infant nutrition, with very restrictive standards, particularly regarding additives (preservatives, colourants, sweeteners), pesticide residues, or nitrate content. These standards are defined by national and international health authorities.
South African baby foods generally contain no preservatives, colourants or artificial flavours.

Contact us to learn how DFS and Steriflow can enhance your processing.

Enquire Now