Fresh food from the freezer

DSI DANTECH I PROFILE

Fresh food freezer from the DSI Dantech is the world’s first singular supplier of mechanical, cryogenic, and plate technology for the food industry. The company believes in a high quality of food with staff priding themselves in the strength of their technologies. The ambition is to change the industry with innovative and cutting-edge products that benefit both the environment and customers’ budget.

DSI Dantech builds on the strong foundations of three former organisations: Belgian Cryogenic Equipment and Services NV, Dantech Freezing Systems A/S, and DSI Freezing Solutions A/S. While the companies had strong positions within their respective fields, they joined forces in May 2021 with a new name and one goal: to change the market for thermal treatment food.

CEO Lars Priess stated that it was “important to create one common platform and approach to the market”, which lead to the birth of DSI Dantech. With a new brand identity and matching website, the aim is to stand out in the industry.

Today, the company is a market leader with a global reach and 325 employees spread across seven main production facilities and additional sales offices in Europe, the United States and Asia. Combined, the facilities have 100 years of knowledge within freezing, cooling, and heating solutions and more than 10,000 solutions installed across the globe. With this expertise and a constantly growing range of products, it’s safe to say that DSI Dantech is here to stay.

DSI DANTECH I PROFILE

Mr Lars Priess, CEO

The strength of technology

The range of thermal treatment technology offered by DSI Dantech falls under three categories. First, there is mechanical freezing that uses a circulating refrigerant to reduce air temperature surrounding the food; while plate freezing is a double contact freezing method, where a coolant passes through the plates and freezes them quickly. Food is then placed in the freezer in between the frozen plates. Lastly, DSI Dantech also offers cryogenic technologies, in which gas, usually in the form of Nitrogen or CO2, is sprayed across the food to instantly freeze it.

The promise is a single supplier for any freezing, cooling, and heating solutions, and with these technologies, DSI Dantech lives up to that promise. Among its products are mechanical spiral freezers, chillers, and ovens that are specially designed to minimise the cost per kilo treated product. With a unique and efficient airflow, DSI Dantech’s spirals provide faster freezing times that result in a higher quality of the food’s quality and yield, as well as maximising the food safety. The spirals also have an open and compact design, which makes them easier to clean and maintain, avoiding corrosion of the material.

Another of the company’s stand out products is the IQF Tunnel Systems, which are ideal for freezing, cooling, and heating food without having to compromise the freshness or natural appearance of frozen food products. By conveying the food through a tunnel of circulating air, the thermal effects are efficient and gentle, so it doesn’t affect the cell structure of the food too harshly. This helps improve product quality and yield with, for instance, significantly optimised drip loss. Much like the spiral freezers, the tunnel systems are designed to minimise the cost per kilo treated product and ensure a low energy consumption.

Mr Priess stated that one of the crucial aspects of the company is to “help promote sustainability”. According to him, by collaborating with customers and offering new technological solutions, DSI Dantech can help with a “significant energy saving while minimising product loss and optimising food quality”. This can be done by, for example, replacing traditional blast freezers with new IQF spiral, tunnel or plate technology, which save energy while minimising product loss and secure a high food quality.

While DSI Dantech offers innovative technologies, it’s the customisable thermal solutions that make them unique. Every detail is based on product characteristics and its customers’ capacities, facility space and line layout, but most importantly, DSI Dantech makes it possible to combine dif-

DSI DANTECH I PROFILE

ferent thermal technologies, so you get everything you need from a single supplier. From freezing to cooling and heating.

Strong relations

It’s evident that DSI Dantech takes great pride in working closely together with customers as well as suppliers and other key stakeholders.

“One of our three core values is strong relationships,” Mr Priess states. “On the supplier side, we have a mixture of large international supplies and smaller local suppliers that very often offer significant advantages when it comes to flexibility.”

To the company, a good collaboration makes it easier to develop the right solutions for the customers and thereby honouring DSI Dantech’s purpose of optimising results and contributing to the protection of the environment.

Reflecting on Covid-19, Mr Priess mentioned how amazing the entirety of DSI Dantech handled the pandemic as a team.

“Our own employees have shown fantastic support and flexibility during the pandemic,” he acknowledged. “In certain parts of Denmark, where we have our main production facilities, they were under tight restrictions, but there were a lot of clever ideas and a collective can-do attitude from our employees during this time.”

This engagement of employees shows that strong relationships are prominent throughout the company, and not only when it comes to customers.

Mapping out the future

The company’s future plans include both expansion and a higher focus on sustainability. Most notably, DSI Dantech is actively seeking to increase its production and presence in the United States “to be closer to the market both to provide better and faster service to our customers but also to help avoid transportation cost and environmental impact”.

Mr Priess also revealed the company is currently researching and investing both time and energy into automation. By automating more products, DSI Dantech would make it easier to lower energy consumption.

As for the future Mr Priess has cited 2022 as ‘the year of consolidation’, after two major acquisitions during the pandemic. With these new acquisitions on board, he stated that “the company is also actively working on mapping the total CO2 usage of all aspects of the business”. By looking into and adjusting its own carbon footprint, DSI Dantech is fully committed to its sustainability agenda.

For future endeavors, Mr Priess informed that the company has identified nine core markets to which DSI Dantech will endeavor to excel further. He concluded by saying: “At DSI Dantech, we always have an appetite for further acquisitions.”

With the cutting-edge technology to back up global ambitions, DSI Dantech is definitely a name to look out for. n