New technology to add value to Irish seafood
BIM’s custom built Seafood Development Centre (SDC) in Clonakilty, Co. Cork has recently invested in reformed and breading technologies
BIM are currently involved in industry trials using a newly-acquired Deighton forming and breading line and are testing multi-matrix combinations of fish, binders, breading and coating systems.
Market data is being used to reverse-engineer successful product concepts and to develop bespoke product offerings for target consumer groups and multiples.
The innovation centre engages closely with Irish ingredients and international ingredient suppliers including Healy Ingredients, Dutch Protein Services (NL) and Kerry Ingredients (IRL) to ensure product concepts can be developed for small to medium production systems and larger-scale production lines. An experienced Seafood Technologist is on-hand to advise companies on processing and ingredients selection and in-factory trials are ongoing.
John Fagan, senior technologist at BIM, explains: “We have received a large amount of queries to date regarding forming and breading technologies for whitefish and shellfish species. In response to industry requests, we have secured a commercial forming, breading and flash-frying line from Deighton, UK and this is backed-up by a Baader 600 meat separator so we can look at both whole-fillet and recovered meat products across a wide variety of species. We found that by using a Baader 600 meat separator, up to 4kg or previously unused and unavailable seafood flesh can be recovered from 10kg of previously discarded material eg fish frames. This meat is of high quality and can be used as raw material to develop value-added reformed products”.
The SDC is involved in commercial trials combining such meats with binders, flavours and toppings to develop reformed fish cakes, nuggets and other convenience products. An important dimension of the project is to test new concepts using commercial-grade equipment and develop market-relevant, scalable new concepts for industry.
The centre is heavily involved in optimising processing and formulation protocols for individual and combinations of ingredients. Previously underutilised fish species including Blue whiting and Boarfish are being explored as an abundant source of raw material in combination with more mainstream fish species.
“The challenge is to combine highly nutritional fish species in a way as to deliver maximum flavour, texture and quality for target markets and to use the abundant fish species we have access to in combination with highly nutritional and healthy clean label ingredients”, added Mr Fagan.
