Automated cleaning of tunnel freezer
Tunnel freezers are an essential part of many food production lines – from ice cream and bakery products to prepared meals, poultry, fish and vegetables. But on every shift, they also collect fat, protein, crumbs, sauce residues, and icing, often in hard-to-reach places. If this build-up isn’t removed effectively, it can affect product quality, create hygiene risks and lead to unplanned downtime when something finally blocks, freezes up or fails.
Cleaning a tunnel freezer is not as simple as one might think. Low temperatures, tight spaces, conveyors, fans and air ducts all make access a challenge.
On top of that, you need to manage water use, avoid re-freezing of moisture inside the tunnel and keep cleaning time as short as possible so production can get back up and running. All while maintaining consistent hygiene standards from one shift to the next.
An automated cleaning solution helps balance all of these demands. With the right approach, you can remove residues effectively, limit ice build-up, reduce cross-contamination risks and shorten cleaning windows. That means safer products, more reliable performance and a freezing process your operators can trust day after day.
Tailored to match the freezer
Freezers vary, and so do the residues depending on the product being frozen. The construction, the belts or trays, and the organic soil left behind – all elements affect the approach to cleaning programme and solution design.
Our automated cleaning solutions are tailored to match the freezer in terms of the positioning of the nozzle bars and the angle of the spray nozzles. The cleaning process is segmented to ensure proper water-jet impact at the correct pressure on the surface, and the segment sequence is programmed to prevent cross-contamination.
The impact of integrating automated cleaning is visible on your bottom line and your resource consumption.
Savings on time, labour and water
At a UK ice cream processing facility, the manual cleaning process was too time-consuming. Two people spent three hours each on cleaning one tunnel freezer. So management decided to integrate an automated cleaning solution to reduce cleaning time.
The integration resulted in savings in more than one aspect:
| Manual cleaning | Automated cleaning | Savings | |
| Cleaning time | 180 min. | 67 min. | 63% |
| Labour costs | 2 people - 3 hours | 1 person (inspection) | 83% |
| Water consumption | 10,800 litres | 8,847 litres | 18% |
| Total savings | 56% | ||
Our products
Our automated cleaning systems for tunnel freezers consist of standard elements comprised into customised systems matching the individual freezer and the requirements you have for optimising the cleaning and sanitation processes in your food processing plant.
The design is hygienic and intuitive, and our products are made from high quality materials. By applying stainless steel for the vast majority of the components, we ensure that our products are solid and with a long lifespan.
We're here to help
Choosing the right cleaning solution for your tunnel freezer has a significant and positive impact on a wide range of matters relating to the smooth running of the production. By mapping out the cleaning process based on the freezer's construction, we can determine the optimal segmentation of the process.
If you’re interested in hearing more about how we can help you maintain a high level of hygiene and food safety in your food processing plant as well as reduce operational costs, please don’t hesitate to contact our Sales team for an informal chat.
We are ready to listen.
