Getting Your Fruit Ready for Export: The Secret is in the Heat
If you’re shipping dried fruit internationally, you know the headache. The standards for color and shelf-life are brutal. One bad batch and you’ve got a shipping container full of waste. We’ve noticed a lot of plants moving away from old-school convection ovens. Why? Because those ovens are clumsy. They tend to sear the outside of the fruit while the middle stays damp. It’s frustrating. That’s where our shortwave IR lamps come in. Power and Speed Here’s the thing: these lamps don’t waste time heating up the air around the fruit. They push heat directly into the tissue. It’s fast. Really fast. And that means your line keeps moving. Depending on your plant’s power grid, you can pick from a few different voltage setups. If you go with the high-voltage tubes, you can cover more ground without losing power at the end of the line. Just a heads-up—make sure your control panels can handle that first big kick of current when you flip the switch. Built to Last We use high-purity quartz glass for the housing. We did this because these lamps cycle on and off quickly, and cheap glass would just crack under that kind of thermal shock. Inside, there’s a halogen gas fill. It stops the tungsten filament from evaporating too quickly, so you aren’t replacing bulbs every other week. Plus, we use R7s or SK15 connectors. They’re basically “plug and play” for most conveyor systems, so you won’t have to rip out your lamp holders or rewire your whole floor. A Few Things to Watch Out For Now, this kind of heat is intense. Because it’s so powerful, you have to get your belt speed exactly right. If the fruit lingers under the lamp for even a few seconds too long, you’ll scorch the skin. It happens quickly. To keep things under control, I highly recommend using a PID controller and a thermocouple. It takes the guesswork out of it. And don’t forget your cooling fans. You need to pull that excess heat away from the reflectors, otherwise, the housing might start to warp.