A fruit processing company, cleans its pipes every six hours through a three step Clean In Place (CIP) technique. Water used in the first rinse dilutes the pushed product, forming a blended mixture which is wasted. This represents a loss of 0,17% of the product during each cleaning cycle.
Introducing Ice pigging as an eco-innovative product push technique, replaces the first rinse, thus elimiating the dilution and loss of product. The ice pig also serves in cleaning the pipe, thus reducing the chemical use, and the cleaning cycle time. Due to major benefits, the payback period was only 2 years despite the high investment cost of the intervention.