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Alfa Laval has launched a new hygienic line of gasketed plate heat exchangers (GPHEs) to help food and beverage manufacturers maximise productivity and maintain high hygiene standards. Alfa Laval's new line is designed to maximise uptime for operators while meeting the industry's hygiene standards. The GPHE range is currently available in two sizes: H4 and the larger H8. It features an enhanced transfer area for more uniform heat distribution and efficiency, as well as a new cleaning-in-place (CIP) channel for improved cleanability. According to the company, these features together allow for longer operating times, "while the GPHE’s bespoke plate pattern ensures gentle treatment of delicate products". The unit is fully configurable, and it can be tailored to suit the specific needs of the operation without requiring the purchase of new exchangers. Colin Morgan, business unit manager for food heat transfer at Alfa Laval, said: “It goes without saying that hygiene has always been a top priority for food and beverage manufacturers, as cross-contamination between product batches has the potential to cause serious harm to end customers if left unchecked". He added: “The hygienic line has the potential to completely revolutionise the way manufacturers approach uptime. If we take cheese production as an example, operators might be looking at four hours of cleaning to every eight that the equipment is active in order to ensure there is no cross-contamination. With the hygienic line, this can be improved to just two hours cleaning for every 12 hours in operation, without compromising these standards. “The hygienic line is ready to deliver a step-change for food and beverage process lines. Together, improved efficiency, increased uptime and decreased chemical consumption mean that manufacturers can benefit from extremely short payback times – sometimes as low as a single week. Technology such as this will be key to harnessing productivity and ensuring that the wider UK manufacturing industry remains buoyant.”