CASE STUDY TREE TOP AARON HAND | EXECUTIVE EDITOR
Decanter Helps Optimize Fruit Juice Concentrate Process Moving to a new style of decanter largely because of maintenance issues with older machines, a fruit processor found several ways the new system improved production, including sanitation and flexibility.
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ITH ITS HEADQUARTERS in Selah, Wash.—in the heart of the state’s apple country—it’s no surprise that Tree Top got its start in apples. These days, the grower-owned cooperative, representing orchards throughout Washington, Oregon, and Idaho, still focuses on making high-quality apple juice, but also a range of other fruit products as well. At its facility in Prosser, Wash., Tree Top makes a variety of fruit juice concentrates. The majority of the year is focused on apples and pears, but the plant processes a wide range of fruit on a seasonal basis, including strawberries, blueberries, blackberries, cranberries, mangoes, and plums. Decanters, used to extract finely solubilized fruit, are an important part of the juice concentrate pro-
cess. “We bring the fruit into the plant, inspect it, it gets milled into the consistency of apple sauce, we depectinize it, and then we run it through decanters to pull out the solids,” explains Brian Curtis, plant manager at the Prosser facility. Tree Top had some old decanters, some built in the early 1990s, that were beginning to be more trouble than they were worth. “We were reaching a point where they were becoming obsolete and the maintenance was incredibly expensive and frequent,” Curtis says. “Tree Top decided it was time to upgrade those decanters.” The processor bought its first Flottweg decanter in 2012 at its headquarters in Selah, Wash., and then the Prosser facility got its first the next year. Prosser
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Though apple juices and other products are the company’s mainstay most of the year, Tree Top makes seasonal products from a range of other fruits as well.
PHOTO COURTESY OF TREE TOP
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| April 2021 | www.profoodworld.com
3/31/21 8:14 AM
