Some of the 100 new companies that joined EHEDG recently have done so because their business has ventured into the food industry and they acknowledged their need to learn more about hygienic design to be competitive in that market space. HAUS Centrifugal Technologies, a successful equipment producer based in Turkey, is an example of this. EHEDG Connects Magazine talks to the owner of this company Hakkı Gözlüklü, who shares why he decided that his company should become a full fledged EHEDG Company Member.
How did the growth of your family company come about?
Hakkı Gözlüklü: ‘Our company is now 68 years old. It’s a 100 percent family owned business, based in Aydin, Turkey, where our headquarters are located. Of course, at the end of the day, we are an international company. We have several sister companies all around the world, but the main production is in Turkey, and also we have a new production facility in Italy.
You are a producer of high performance centrifugal machines. How is performance related to hygienic design?
‘The performance results of our machines are very critical, and so is their reliability. The centrifuges are the heart of the main processes in dairy and in the beverages industry. Our machines play a central role within those processes, they are at the heart of the process lines, for example clarifying and debacterising the milk, so yes, hygienic design is very important for us in this market space. Our family business has been around for almost 70 years now, and EHEDG has been around for 30 years, but only in recent years, HAUS became more and more engaged with the food and beverage business. We decided to join EHEDG to support our new food and beverage clients, and now we are looking deeper into the hygienic design and engineering aspects of our products.’’
How do you plan to optimise the hygienic design of your type of equipment?
‘‘It’s not too difficult for us to adapt our equipment to the newest EHEDG hygienic design requirements. Due to the high speed rotation, the machines are already suitable for CIP applications. But there are some design features that we can still improve upon, particularly related to the cleanability and drainability of our equipment. I made it clear that it is our engineers’ duty to realise these improvements.’’
Which EHEDG Membership offerings are most important to your company right now?
‘‘Our R&D department staff is actively working on applying the EHEDG Guideline Documents. They are using the guidelines as their primary reference documents, especially EHEDG Guideline Document 8, which covers the basic hygienic design principles. The guidelines are currently directing and shaping the product design in terms of hygienic criteria.’’
Will this eventually result in you certifying one of your products?
‘‘Our R&D team got in touch with EHEDG in Italy, with the EHEDG Authorised Testing Laboratory led by Dr. Giampaolo Betta. Together we are currently investigating our options to obtain EHEDG Certificates for our first products.’’
Your engineers have decades of experience in centrifugal technologies. Are you willing to send them off to EHEDG Working Groups so that they can contribute to the development of new EHEDG Guideline Documents?
‘‘Yes definitely, this is our goal: we would like to contribute to EHEDG by participating in the EHEDG Working Groups.’’
In 2022, food industry stakeholders, food equipment suppliers, developers and system integrators, scientists and legislators from all over the world met up in Munich, to exchange views, ideas and best practices on topics like “Requirements and solutions for the food factory of the future”, “Hygienic Design meets Digitalisation” and “Intelligent Food Production”.
The 2022 World Congress of the European Hygienic Engineering and Design Group (EHEDG) offered unique opportunities to connect and gain new insights into food safety, quality, productivity and sustainability enhanced by hygienic design.
We attend as a member of EHEDG to EHEDG World Congress 2022 in Munich,Germany. It is an opportunity to share and gain insights into the latest state-of-the-art hygienic design of the processing equipments, which is fundamental to the safe manufacturing of food products. Hygienic design
also leads to an increased food product quality, and reduced manufacturing costs by enhancing cleanability.
