A newly introduce, integrated safety and hygiene management tool is set to bring improved peace of mind to quality assurance and production managers in the food industry. The ActSol product combines a water treatment solution, a cleaning solution and a detergent disinfectant, and is the culmination of ten years of original discover, research, innovation, refinement and a substantial capital investment
Electrochemical activation technology company, Radical Waters, is the company responsible for the innovation of this safety and hygiene management device. By harnessing water, salt and energy, and manipulating these ingredients to create activated molecules, microbes are inactivated and climanated because of their inability to adapt to these energised states. The company “has essentially converted water by splitting it into positively and negatively charged streams and keeping them seperate, into a disinfectant”, explains Radical Waters technical support specialist Robin Kirkpatrick. This innovative advance in hygiene management can be integrated in food processing institutions, as well as any water-based industry where effective hygiene and sanitation require proactive and environment compliant remedies.
The attainment and maintenance of the quality of finished products through compliance with microbial bioload specifications, are always of critical concern for processed-food producers. The maintenenace of optimal hygiene management standards to ensure consistent microbial safety of processed-food products is imperative for quality assurance.
Traditionally, plant and food product decontamination had been restricted by the potential harmful impact of the decontamination agent on the food product and personnel. This has meant that hygiene management processes have been applied only during down time and sometimes companies run for weeks without stopping to clean equipment, because down times have a negative effect on productivity and profitability. The result is the increase of microbial bioload and potential cross-contamination of food products during the processing period, which, in turn, cause impaired microbial quality assurance, food spoilage and a potential danger to consumer health thereafter.
However, according to Kirkpatrick, this need no longer be the case, as Radical Waters’ technology works while the plant is in operation. The technology aims to be as unobtrusive as possible and can be integrated and streamlined into existing operations, making it as easy as possible for a company to adopt the new technology. Radical Waters insists that its Actsol solutions are tailor-made to suit the spcific and individual needs of its customers and provide a potent, natural means of disinfection. The company has grown to specialise in providing solutions to the food, grain, beverage, meat processing and medical sectors. “We take pride in the quality of the solution that we produce and we have all the necessary measures, checks and balances in place to ensure that what we put out is consistent and reliably effective. We have a number of fail-safe mechanisms installed in our devices that guarantee that the water that is produced is always of the highest quality,” confirms Kirkpatrick.
Radical Waters is the first African company to receive South African Bureau of Standards (SABS) certification for its safety and hygiene management tool for the food industry. This certification was the result of three years of interaction and evaluation of the products between Radical Waters and the SABS.Since the process involves a wholly new technology accredited certification bodies had nothing in their means and array of standard operating procedures to asses what ‘electro-activated’ water is. “Now that we have gained our certification, we have the capacity to package our product to a broader range of people. Before, we could only be involved in larger companies who had faith in our device and econmoic capabilities to invest in our product on a a larger scale,” says Kirkpatrick. He further explains that the main challenge that the company had to overcome was convincing people that the company could actually do what they claimed they could do, and help the certification body to “rewrite the books, and create a standard against which the company’s technology and product could be measured”. “It was difficult to convince people that you can clean water with electro-chemically activated water, but, of course, introduction of new technology is not for the fain-hearted,” concludes Kirkpatrick.