Feb 2017

Lutz Refrigeration has designed many fruit ripening or degreening rooms over the years. 

The basic principle behind these rooms is that fruit is picked before it has ripened and stored for lengthy periods of time in standard cold rooms just above freezing temperature.  The fruit can be stored like this for months.  

Once the fruit is required for the market farmers will pass the fruit through the ripening rooms. 

The process in a nutshell involves introducing Ethylene gas into the ripening chambers to kick-start the ripening process of the fruit or vegetable, once the process has begun the product will begin to emit Ethylene gas naturally.  The rooms will monitor ethylene gas levels automatically and extract gas/provide fresh air as required to maintain the correct level of Ethylene in the room as per the farmers recommendation. 

Modern fruit ripening rooms allow the farmer to schedule the entire process in advance so that he can set up a ripening process days in advance and the rooms will automatically maintain temperaures, gas concentractions, humidty etc.  The values of the above variable will constantly be altered during the process to achieve the farmers desired ripening "recipe". 

Please feal free to contact us should you wish to learn more about these processes or if would like a quote for the supply of fruit or vegetable ripening rooms