D&JA Food Group: Introducing the Model 320 Industrial Pilot Vacuum Low-Temperature Frying System to Accelerate R&D and Commercial Validation of Natural Fruit and Vegetable Crisps
1. Customer Background & Challenge
Customer background: D&JA is a renowned Australian premium brand of natural fruit and vegetable crisps, well known on the market for producing additive-free, healthy and crispy shiitake mushroom crisps, apple slices and mixed vegetable crisps.
Pain points & needs:
The cost of small-batch trials and R&D is extremely high: when developing new flavors or new fruit and vegetable categories, testing directly on large industrial production lines leads to high trial-and-error costs and occupies mainline production capacity.
Process parameter validation is difficult: high-quality Australian local produce (such as high-sugar apples, high-fiber shiitake mushrooms and root vegetables) varies significantly in moisture and sugar structure. Traditional drying or high-temperature frying easily triggers browning and blackening, destroying the natural color and dietary fiber of the produce.
Accurate data is required before commercial mass production: a pilot/trial-grade unit is needed that can perfectly replicate the process parameters of large industrial machines (vacuum level, oil temperature, centrifugal de-oiling speed) to provide 100% reproducible data curves for subsequent scale-up.
2. Xinlianxing's Customized Solution (The Solution)
Xinlianxing custom-built 1 Model 320 (30㎡-class / industrial pilot-grade) vacuum low-temperature frying system for the Australian customer.
1:1 industrial-grade process replication: although it is a pilot/trial machine, this equipment fully inherits the underlying technical architecture of Xinlianxing's large industrial machines, including negative-pressure dehydration, variable-frequency centrifugal de-oiling and a precision constant-temperature control system.
Recipe digitalization and curve storage: equipped with a smart PLC touchscreen system, it precisely records and saves the vacuum level variations, frying temperature and de-oiling speed parameters for different fruit and vegetable categories, making it convenient for the R&D team to run multi-batch comparative experiments.
Precise and flexible temperature control: targeting the extreme heat sensitivity of fruits and vegetables, micron-level negative-pressure regulation and gentle thermal control enable the hot oil to rapidly evaporate moisture at a lower temperature, completely avoiding charring and color blackening issues.
3. Quantified ROI & Impact
⚡ New product development cycle shortened by 60%:
Efficient pilot validation: thanks to the flexibility of the Model 320 pilot machine, the customer's R&D team can quickly complete recipe testing and process sampling of small batches, significantly accelerating the pace of new product launches.
Trial-and-error costs greatly reduced: the traditional model of occupying large production lines for test materials is gone, and material and energy losses during sampling are minimized.
Preserving natural colors and extremely low oil content:
Quality fully benchmarked against Australian market access: the finished products perfectly retain the natural pigments of Australian native produce (such as the deep brown of shiitake mushrooms and the vibrant colors of fruits and vegetables) and trace elements, with a clean, non-greasy surface that fully complies with Australian food standards.
Seamless connection to future high-capacity expansion:
The mature PLC process curves tuned on the Model 320 pilot machine can be directly transferred 100% to large industrial production lines in the future, eliminating technical risks in later large-scale expansion.
4. Client Endorsement
"When developing premium natural fruit and vegetable crisps, a trial machine with stable performance that can precisely replicate industrial production parameters is of paramount importance. The Model 320 vacuum frying pilot equipment provided by Xinlianxing has performed outstandingly, with extremely precise temperature control and de-oiling results. It not only helped us complete process sampling for multiple new products at very low cost and very high speed, but also thoroughly solved the long-standing problems of easy browning and high oil content in high-sugar produce. Every set of process curves recorded by the equipment provides strong technical assurance for our future industrial scale-up."
— Director of R&D and Production Technology, Asia-Pacific, D&JA Food Group