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HPP extends shelf life of fresh dips

Because it ‘busts up the bacteria’ with minimal loss of flavor or nutritional value, High Pressure Processing made it possible for these hummus and lentil dips to go nationwide.

SHELF LIFE. HPP processing has tripled the shelf life on hummus products sold by Hope Foods.
SHELF LIFE. HPP processing has tripled the shelf life on hummus products sold by Hope Foods.

What do you do if you’re a startup company offering organic fresh food in a category just waiting to explode and the only thing blocking you from taking your product nationwide is a limited shelf life? If you’re Hope Foods of Louisville, CO, you install a High Pressure Processing machine from Avure.

Still relatively new, HPP is a post-packaging technology that uses ultra-high water pressure to kill bacteria that can hasten spoilage. It’s an alternative to preservatives or thermal processing.

In February, Hope Foods began using HPP on the product that got them started: hummus in 8-oz plastic tubs. Lately the firm has expanded its product offerings to include a lentil dip, too. Both the hummus and the lentil dip are subjected to HPP, a technology neatly summed up this way by Hope Foods Marketing Manager Steven Villanueva.
“For people who don’t want to add heat or don’t want to add preservatives, you put product under extreme pressure, like 87,000 pounds per square inch, and it literally busts up the bacteria. We’re hoping to get two to four times the shelf life.”

From farmers market to supermarket
Hope Foods had no plans for HPP when they started marketing their hummus in a stock polypropylene container with in-mold labeling. Farmers markets and health food stores in Colorado were as far as their distribution chain stretched. But once that chain included places like California—reached by trucks that have to pass through some scorching desert heat—product quality issues started to surface. So the firm started exploring their options. For a food company dedicated to organic products and a “clean” label, the use of preservatives was out of the question. And while thermal processing might have been explored, it would have come with some serious downsides.

“We looked at it and quickly realized that for the kind of quality, freshness, and taste profile we were trying to deliver, we couldn’t get there with heat processing,” says Hope Foods President Robbie Rech. “When we heard about HPP, we were initially put off by how expensive an option it is. Outsourcing it might have been a good way to get started, but there was nobody anywhere near us offering HPP as a service. Having it done in Texas or Chicago or the East Coast was a possibility, but it would have been complicated.

“More important, we are committed to self-manufacturing. It’s a core value with us. In order to put out a premium product, we felt like we needed to have that level of control over our products. So we started looking into the feasibility of installing our own system. We saw that it would allow us to have really high-quality dips and spreads--using ingredients like avocados, green chiles, and red peppers—and do things that other people simply couldn’t do if they were using heat processing. That gave us the confidence to go ahead and take the plunge on investing in HPP.”

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