Ideally located in the prime strawberry growing region of Santa Maria, Calif., Titan Frozen Fruit is a premium frozen fruit company that processes frozen strawberry products available nationwide.

Comprised of a team of tenured fruit processing professionals, Titan Frozen Fruit created a state-of-the-art facility in October 2013 that exceeded industry standards and requirements of their global customers.

Objectives and challenges

To meet the goals of “processing for the next generation,” Titan Frozen Fruit needed to equip their facility with the most innovative and efficient fruit processing technology. And, because the facility was new construction, they needed to start from the ground up.

Building a new construction, non-residential facility in California comes with strict energy and water regulations. With California facing its driest year on record and state legislation demanding severe conservation measures, Titan Frozen Fruit needed a partner to provide the technically advanced equipment to keep production levels above par and cut energy and utility costs while still adhering to legislative and natural resource limitations.

Solutions

Based on extensive industry experience, a primary focus for Titan was to move away from the traditional 800Hp boilers to smaller, more efficient, units, yet still produce higher quantities of product. Therefore, Titan Frozen Fruit selected Miura North America, Rockmart, Ga., who installed three LX-100 on-demand steam boilers that produce steam in just five minutes and maintain an 85% fuel-to-steam efficiency.

In addition to the on-demand steam and energy-efficient boilers, Miura provided a complete water treatment and remote monitoring system to significantly increase conservation efforts and produce the strawberry concentrate and purees at a high level of demand.

“I’ve been in this industry for over 45 years, and have researched or worked with all [of] the major boiler companies. None of them were able to offer an energy efficient package to meet our sustainability and production needs like Miura,” says Al Souza, director of operations for Titan Frozen Fruit.

Results

The complete system from Miura helped Titan Frozen Fruit receive their Permit to Construct in less than two months as compared to the typical 180 days in Santa Barbara County.

“The county has very strict emissions controls for new construction, yet with Miura’s systems, we were able to construct and begin production in less than eight months,” Souza adds.

Titan also received LEED certification for new construction with the installation of the complete Miura package.

“I came from the same type of facility—processing strawberries—where we used 800hp boilers, and our energy bills were about $42,000 a month. With the Miura boilers, our monthly costs have been decreased by more than half,” says Souza.

“We predict to have our equipment paid off in five years, and the money we save on energy and utility costs will help us reach this goal sooner,” says Eric Duyck, vice president of operations. “Annual service maintenance of our Miura products is only one day vs. the 10-14 days we were down at my last company. We save a lot of money being able to produce product while our competition needs two weeks to start back up.”

Anh Tuan