Not all hoses are suitable for use in transporting foodstuffs. Only hoses and tubing that comply with certain strict regulations and guidelines may be used to transport coffee, sugar or even milk powder from A to B.
For many years, Masterflex has offered a range of certified food grade hoses and the corresponding connection and linking elements in high quality materials. "We decided to ensure that our products conformed to the new requirements as early as possible," explains Joachim Jacobi, FOOD Hose Development Project Manager at Masterflex. "And we are the first company on the market to be able to guarantee that our permanently antistatic FOOD hoses meet the new stipulations for compatibility with foodstuffs specified in Regulation No. 10/2011. The walls of our FOOD-A hoses remain constantly antistatic with their surface resistance of Ro < 109 Ohm and are thus characterised by the conductivity required by TRBS 2153 (ATEX)." After several years of transition, the EU Regulation will be the single seminal standard that will apply throughout the foodstuff industry from January 2016. The other hoses of the Master-PUR FOOD series have met the requirements of the Regulation since 2012.
Hence, all the FOOD hose and tubing products manufactured by the Masterflex Group may be used to transport foodstuffs - from potato starch, sugar to deep-frozen products and even powder for baby milk formulas. "We provide our customers not only with the high quality that they have come to expect from us, but also with the best possible compliance with legal requirements," adds Jacobi.
Since 2011, businesses in the food processing sector have been required to conform to the stipulations of the general framework Regulation (EC) No 1935/2004, Regulation (EC) No. 2023/2006 on 'Good manufacturing practice' and specifically Regulation (EU) No. 10/2011 on 'plastic materials and articles intended to come into contact with food', also known as the 'European Plastics Implementation Measure' (PIM).
The purpose of the new regulation is to consolidate the various regulations on this aspect throughout the European Union. The requirements with regard to migration testing and the use of foodstuff simulants have, for example, been appropriately modified. In addition, the required contact times and contact temperatures have been redefined and the regulation has been extended to cover multilayer materials and multilayer composite films.
"All the starting materials for our FOOD hoses meet the stringent stipulations of national and international foodstuff legislation and they can thus be safely used within the foodstuff sector," points out Jacobi. This has been confirmed and certified by an independent test institute. In addition to the three specified standards, the food grade hoses by Masterflex also conform to the requirements of the FDA (US Food and Drug Administration) and the German Food and Feed Code.
As it meets these stipulations, the Masterflex FOOD-A spiral hose series is thus the first to conform both to Regulation (EU) No. 10/2011 and the guidelines issued by the FDA. "The market's interest in and the demand for our FOOD hose series are thus correspondingly high," discloses Christian Horstkötter, Sales Director at Masterflex. Now available is the test report on the permanently antistatic Master-PUR FOOD A series with stainless steel spiral verifying conformity with 10/2011. Not only the starting material that is subsequently processed was analysed; a sample of the complete antistatic food grade hose was also tested.
Masterflex exclusively employs stainless steel wire for all its FOOD hoses. The incorporated stainless steel spirals ensure that even if the internal surfaces under the wire spirals become worn, the transport hoses remain foodstuff-compatible. "Thanks to the optimised profile of our FOOD hoses, very little residue of the transported foodstuff is retained, making our hoses much easier to clean and also meaning that they can even be used for bidirectional transport," concludes Horstkötter.
You will be able to buy the permanent antistatic FOOD-A hoses from Masterflex as soon as the new standard comes into force on 1 January 2016.
