Industrial Jam Production: an overview

Industrial jam production plays a significant role in the food industries. In this article we will explore how industrial jams are produced, learn the advantages for the businesses and we will discover the best technologies a food industry should develop to produce large quantities, while guaranteeing precise control, quality and consistent results.

How to produce industrial jams

Producing Industrial Jams requires particular attention on different technical aspects in order to guarantee exceptional results. See below some preliminary points to take into consideration before actually beginning the jam production:

Selecting top-quality fruit for your jam
Choosing the right ingredients is the key to obtaining high-quality jam. It’s important to select fresh and ripe fruit that complies with the production standards. Fruit must be in perfect conditions and not rotten. Common mistakes include using unripe or over-ripe fruit; indeed, it’s recommended to use fruit that is perfectly ripe and in season. Over-ripe fruit might compromise the taste and consistency of your jam: make sure you use fruit that is at its peak condition as it will reach the desired cooking level faster.

Dosing the sugar
Make sure you dose your sugar right. Not only does sugar give flavour and consistency to your jam, but it also prevents the growth of dangerous bacteria such as botulin. Follow the correct ratio.

How is industrial jam produced?

Industrial jam is produced on a large scale. The process involves:

Preparing the fruit: cleaning, pealing and chopping.
Cooking: mixing together fruit, sugar and pectin at high temperatures.
Filling and sealing: filling the jars and sealing them.
Pasteurizing: sterilizing the jars to ensure preservation.
Labelling and packaging.

The production of jam is divided into different steps: now let’s dive deeper into the phases of industrial jam production:

Fruit processing

After selecting the fruit, there’s the processing phase. Here’s the main steps:

Washing: fruit must be thoroughly washed to remove any soil residue or pesticides.
Blanching: blanching is a heat process aimed at deactivating enzymatic and oxidative activity in fruits. It’s particularly relevant for certain types of stone fruits that need mechanical pitting (e.g., small stone fruits) if a mechanical pitter is not available.
Cleaning (Pitting-Peeling): for large-stone fruits like peaches, you can proceed with mechanical peeling and manual pitting. In the case of small-stone fruits, using a pass-through machine is the less expensive solution. As a result, you will obtain a puree that is ready for the concentration phase.
Removing Excess: during the processing phase, seeds, peels and other unwanted parts must be removed and separated from the fruit.

Jam cooking

Industrial jam production involves a series of different phases aimed at ensuring quality and safety of the final product. Let’s see step by step how jam is cooked:

Recipe making (Adding Ingredients): in this phase you determine the quantity of semi-finished product that passes on to concentration. Ingredients like sugar, aromas and natural acidity regulators are added, if needed.
Concentration (Cooking): the process of “cooking” jam is actually a process of thermal concentration. The water inside the fruit is eliminated through a process of controlled evaporation. This crucial step is essential to reach the desired degree Brix (sugar level) -which measures the sugar concentration- and also to achieve the perfect consistency of the final product. Sometimes though, in the context of industrial jam production, the concentration phase may be skipped since there already is a high concentration of sugar in the mixture at the beginning.

Packing

Once the jam is ready, it must be packed. Here’s how:

Cleaning the Jars: the glass jars must be inspected and washed to eliminate all risks of contamination.
Filling and Sealing: fill in the jar with the hot jam and seal them immediately. Make sure that the lid is closed tight to avoid contamination.

Industrial pasteurization of jam

Pasteurization is a technique widely used to increase the safety level and shelf-life of the food products. The main objective is to eliminate or significantly reduce the pathogenic microorganisms of the food, without affecting the nutritional and organoleptic values of the recipe.

In the food industry, jam production follows a clearly defined process. It begins with preparing the fruit, which includes cleaning, peeling, and chopping. After that, the fruit is mixed with sugar and pectin and cooked at high temperatures. Once the jam is cooked, it is poured into jars, which are then sealed. These jars undergo the pasteurization process, a crucial step to ensure preservation of the product over time. This process is especially critical because it helps eliminating as many bacteria as possible, ensuring safety of the product. As final step, the jars are labelled and packaged.

Learn more about pasteurization.

Labelling

Lastly, the jars are labelled and made ready for distribution.
The process of industrial jam production must comply with the food safety regulations. This means that you must take measures to ensure the quality, hygiene, and safety of the final product, avoiding contamination or health risks for consumers.

Choose Firex for your Jams: the advantages

If you are a company that engages in the industrial production of jams, choose CUCIMIX by Firex. This industrial cooker will help you increase significantly the quality, the safety and the efficiency levels of your processes, yet promoting innovation and guaranteeing cost reduction.

Choose Firex industrial equipment for the production of jam and you will:

Optimize the cooking process
Increase the food safety level
Facilitate R&D processes
Guarantee efficiency and automation
Achieve consistent quality of the finished product
Standardize the recipes
Standardizzazione delle ricette

The process of producing jams on a large scale involves a number of different steps that require meticulous attention to quality, safety and efficiency levels. Preparing the ingredients, cooking, controlling the quality and labelling: these are all key steps to ensuring an exceptional finished product.

The Firex industrial equipment, and above all the multifunctional cooker CUCIMIX, offer cutting-edge solutions that support each phase of the process. Thanks to its precision, automation and compliance with the food safety regulations, with the Firex equipment you will be able to make delicious jams safely and with significant savings.

Choose Firex and invest on advanced technology that ensures outstanding results and is able to take care of the needs of the industrial jam production market.