Dicam Products

The microwave oven is a well-known piece of equipment in many homes but now this technology has also shown its worth in the industry to facilitate the pasteurisation of egg-trays and EUR-pallets. Normally paper packing material will be useless after one transport, simply because the risk of contamination of bacteria is too big. The microwave oven is an innovation, which makes it possible to re-use moulded fibre (paper) egg-trays and wooden EUR-pallets, which are used in the transport from the manufacturer to the distributor. Why? Because it is possible to disinfect paper-packing material by the process called "pasteurisation". By pasteurisation, all kind of viruses and bacteria's are being killed or inactivated: Salmonella, Blood louse, non H2O bacteria's, etc.

The disinfection process is recommended by CDL, Hartmann, Omni-Pac and Huhtamaki, and is 100% HACCP compliant. The process is acknowledged and documented by the well-known Swedish Institute for Food Process and Biotechnology (SIK). Dicam Microwaves has official use of the SIK-documentation by Danaeg A/S Denmark. The SIK-certification is important for your local regulations and food safety program. SIK-documentation

Type	Type nr.	Trays per hour	Pallets per hour	Power	Filling system
Special	6000-EPA	8000	30	3x400V+80A+0	Full Automatic
Standard	6000-EP	7500	26	3x400V+80A+0	Manuel
Medium	4000-EP	4000	13	3x400V+40A+0	Manuel
Small	2000-E	2000	-	3x400V+20A+0	Manuel

Dicam Microwave provides a wide range of microwave systems for the Egg handling industry. You can choose between manual and automatic systems. For example the 6000 EPA, designed for Prior in Norway, makes it possible to pasteurise 6 batches (of trays or Eur-pallets) in 2 hours fully automatically (without any labour interference). Docking stations can be added to process even more batches. This system is fully computerized. Hint: Let us help you with re-designing your packing station. A perfect fitted system gives you maximum flexibility, low costs and saves on labour. An investment in a microwave oven can very well be interpreted as an economical advantage, as the money saved by re-using paper packaging materials will cover the investment in 3 to 6 months. Inside of the Pasteurisation oven, the 3000 egg-trays are coffered by a plastic bag / thermo blanket for 100% homogeneous heat treatment:

The control panel of the auto 6000 EPA
(standard capacity 33.000 egg trays, 3000 trays per 20 minutes)

Re-use and savings - The system is safe to use and it costs 0,12 Eurocent per egg-tray for 100% disinfection (including service/maintenance and energy costs). A small price to pay for a very safe solution. During the pasteurisation process, one single batch of egg-trays looses between 8 - 12 litre of water. Due to the removal of this moisture, the trays become as strong as new ones. They can therefore be re-used several times before they need to be thrown away due to normal mechanical wear and tear or contamination (dirt). Packing centres, manufacturer of egg grading and egg packing machines and tray producers estimate that the trays can be re-used a minimum of 25 -30 times using the Dicam - SIK approved microwave system. No risk of infection - The process has been documented and tested in practice for many years.
Less environmental impact - Re-using egg trays and EUR-pallets means less impact on the environment. Using microwaves for heating uses less energy than conventional heating using gas, oil or electricity. Economy - Savings made by re-using egg trays and EUR-pallets can easily cover the investment made. Disinfecting paper trays is 13 times cheaper than disinfecting plastic trays. No alternative - Until now it has not been possible to re-use trays or EUR-pallets economically, without the risk of passing on infections from one producer's stock to another. Wear and tear on the trays - It can be documented that the process does not cause extra wear and tear on the moulded fibre egg-trays. Due to the removal of moisture the trays become as strong as new ones. They can therefore be re-used up to 25 - 30 times before they need to be thrown away due to normal mechanical wear and tear or contamination (dirt).

The pasteurisation process

The next pictures give you an idea how t the system has to be operated with EUR-pallets. In this case, instead of a plastic bag a thermo blanket is being used. The oven showed, is one of the first ovens build in 1998 for Danaeg.

Every time the oven operates, detailed information of the process time and length is saved in a computer. Every six month the oven is professionally checked to follow the demands from EU authorities with regards to safety and environmental rules.

Separation of clean and dirty trays

To secure an effective hygienic it is important to focus on the total logistic, only installing a microwave system to inactivate viruses and kill bacteria does not provide a secure process. The individual customer is recommended to make an effective sorting of the trays before pasteurisation to discard dirty trays. This can be done automatic by using the TrayChecker. It is also important to divide the storage of trays and pallets into a dirty - and a clean zone.

TrayChecker system

An optional digital TrayChecker system locates any non-desirable material (contamination) on the egg-trays to select only the best ones: