ABSTRACT
High Pressure Processing equipment began its journey in the food industry over 25 years ago, back in the early 1990’s with first prototypic, semi-industrial systems being commissioned in Japan and USA. But it was not until the late 2000’s when the state-of-the-art in design and materials allowed reliable HPP machines, clearer returns on investment, and hence an incremental growth in the implementation of HPP technology in the field. The two major suppliers, Avure and Hiperbaric, still dominate this machinery market, but other companies are coming into this growing business.
North America has historically been, and continues to be, the main adopter and biggest driver for industrial HPP machines, followed by the European Union, Japan, Korea, Oceania, and South America. In total there are over 400 systems around the World, still a relatively niche technology but growing quickly if we consider that there were only some 200 of these machines by end of 2013.
Important advances in volume, speed, output, reliability and maintainability allow the technology to keep on expanding and penetrating the global markets in a number of food and beverage applications.
This chapter reviews and explains the history perspective of evolution of industrial HPP, the forecasts of growth and upcoming implementation, together with figures and current techno-economical estimates around this technology in the food sector.
