For more than 20 years, high-pressure processing (HPP) has helped beverage-makers bring fresh, healthy and functional beverages to store shelves. In that span, the industry has grown from operating just 10 machines in 2000 to 130 last year, according to Hiperbaric USA Corp. As a result, 143 million gallons of HPP juices and beverages were produced globally in 2020, says Roberto Peregrina, director of the Miami-based company. Now, pioneering engineering efforts are working to bring this processing technique to even more applications.
After four years of research and development, Hiperbaric launched the Hiperbaric 525 Bulk and Hiperbaric 1050 Bulk HPP machines for large-volume beverage production. Instead of processing bottled beverages, the Hiperbaric 525 Bulk and Hiperbaric 1050 Bulk process beverages in 525-liter and 1,050-liter batches, respectively, before they are transferred to the final packages. This process eliminates the bottle-handling steps of the in-pack HPP process and also removes the packaging restrictions of in-pack machines.