Determining shelf life of ingredients for juice production

SUMMARY

Learning how stabilizers for beverages evolve over time is key to estimate the product’s shelf life. A company in the beverage sector wanted to evaluate the functionality and shelf life of a blend of ingredients for juices containing pectin as stabilizing agent two years after being produced. Two measures of the same batch of ingredients were performed in two different moments. First analysis was carried out just after the manufacturing process and the second one was completed two years later. With Chemometric Brain’s qualitative analysis, the customer was able to detect chemical changes occurred in the blend over time. This helped consider the possible loss of functionality of the stabilizer agent, which could impact on the final products’ shelf life.

CONTEXT

A company in the beverage sector was interested in evaluating the functionality of juice products containing pectin as stabilizing agent two years after being produced.

TESTED PRODUCT

Blend of ingredients containing a commonly used pectin in beverage production.

ISSUE

“SAMPLE 1 REV” (light green circle in the image) belonging to the same batch as “SAMPLE 1” but analyzed two years after production was not compliant and showed non-conformities with respect to previous conforming batches.

APPROACH

Two measures of the same batch of ingredients were performed in two different moments. First analysis was carried out just after the manufacturing process (“SAMPLE 1”, pink circle in the image) and the second one was completed two years later, and it was labelled as “SAMPLE 1 REV” (light green circle in the image).

The following graph describes the results obtained after projection of both measures of BATCH 1 onto a model based on a significant number of batches considered as conforming. As we can see, the initial measure of BATCH 1 appears inside the confidence area defined by the product model, while the second measure is outside. These results suggest that, after two years, the pectin batch did not behave in the same way because its NIR spectra fingerprint became different over time. These differences were attributed to chemical changes in the composition.

CONCLUSION

Chemometric Brain software-as-a-service offers the customer the possibility of having a feedback on how manufactured products evolve over time, helping food companies estimate the product shelf life or viability in a rapid, simple and accurate way.

Chemometric Brain software is highly recommended since it has been especially designed to save time and money of customers that are committed to bringing transparency to consumers through a quality control system based on the highest standards of quality, safety, and reliability.

‍