Rick Marshall

The Team at Gridpath Solutions Inc. is led by Rick Marshall.

Rick was principal in the development of the Food Program for Flow International and was instrumental in assembling the press technology from ABB and the pumping technology from Flow. From these roots the commercially viable UHP processing industry was born.

In order to satisfy the ultimate customer needs and fill in the production gaps Rick has assembled a team of associates from the automation, material handling, and high production environments.

Rick Marshall, president, Gridpath Solutions Inc., Stoney Creek, ON.
...
Rick Marshall recognized the need for automated loading/unloading solutions when he was vice president of business development at Flow International.Based in part on his assessment, the Kent, WA, maker of ultra-high pressure waterjet pumps and tools launched Avure Technologies, which has sold scores of HPP units throughout North America in recent years.Marshall left Flow/Avure in 2003 to launch Gridpath Solutions Inc., where he oversees the engineering of systems to move product in and out of HPP presses.His firm designed and built material-handling solutions for Avure units at Avomex, which manufactures guacamole, refrigerated entrees and other products.Last year Avomex augmented its seven Avure presses with a unit from NC Hyperbaric, Madrid, Spain.Marshall's firm also built the peripherals for that machine, and early this year Gridpath became Hyperbaric's North American sales and support representative.Food Engineering recently spoke with Marshall about the technology's development.

FE: How does extreme pressure denature pathogens, viruses and spoilage organisms?

Marshall: It doesn't crush anything, as many people think.
...
Marshall: The first experiments using high pressure to destroy bacteria in food were done in 1897.
...
Marshall: Hormel applied HPP to prosciutto, which is a high-margin product, and shellfish processors use it because it also shucks oysters and results in cost savings.
...
Marshall: At Avure, we were concerned with selling the high-pressure machine, and the A/E was trying to sell design services costing millions of dollars.
...
Marshall: Flow builds isostatic presses, most commonly used in metal forming to fabricate parts like jet-engine blades.
...
Marshall: Gridpath was working with Avomex's plants in Mexico, installing a validation system for all seven of their vertical presses.
...
Marshall: Most of the maintenance involves seal replacement.
...
Marshall: Processing time is product specific, but if you look at ready-to-eat meat in a vacuum pouch, throughput of 2,000 to 2,500 lbs. an hour on a single machine is reasonable.

Meat processors are the strongest potential market for high pressure, Flow's Rick Marshall says, and juice companies are another promising segment.But HPP's cost puts it out of reach for small and mid-sized firms.Thermal pasteurization costs significantly less, but heat pasteurization isn't an option for juice makers serving health-conscious consumers.Those processors need a more benign procedure at an economical cost.The emergence of ultraviolet (UV) pasteurization just may fill the bill.

Low-cost UV pasteurization

Rick Marshall, president of Ontariobased Gridpath Solutions, Inc., NC's North American agent.Design improvements such as using more stainless steel were also suggested as were HACCP considerations, process validation and recordkeeping.

In 2004, NC Hyperbaric partnered with Gridpath Solutions to give it a market presence outside of Europe.Two years later, "North America is the hottest market they've got and the meat and poultry industry is really what is driving that," says Marshall.Five NC systems are currently in plants in the United States and Canada, and at least nine more will be added by the end of the year, according to Marshall.In Europe, NC has approximately 14 systems in place.

"I was always fascinated by the science and the potential it offered to certain markets, particularly ready-to-eat meat," says Marshall, who worked on the team installing Hormel's first H.P.P. system in the late 1990s

In lieu of other in-package kill steps, like irradiation, Lm regulations created demand for another alternative, and H.P.P. fit the bill."High pressure was wonderful but the big problem was the economics didn't make sense," says Marshall.At the time, the process was slow, and installation was expensive.To implement the technology at that time, processors had to either dig a hole in the floor to accommodate the equipment or build a mezzanine and raise and lower products to load them into the vertical machines.

NC Hyperbaric's equipment is hori- zontal in design and is configured to drop into a conventional production line."You load product at one end of the machine and finished product comes out the other end," says Marshall.

With a vertical machine only one end of the pressure vessel opens, which means one ceiling-mounted hoist must be used to remove finished product, while another hoist loads in the next batch of products.Marshall points out the proximity of finished and unfinished products can potentially create cross-contamination risks.

Packaging requirements for H.P.P. are broad, regardless of configuration or brand."As long as you use a plastic component that will compress 15 percent, you're fine.You can use a completely vac-packed or gasflushed package or semi-rigid, but you couldn't use a completely rigid package, like a glass jar," says Marshall.The only other consideration relating to packaging and H.P.P. is the application of the label."Typically, packages are dried and labeled after processing," he says.

"Inside the chamber everything is subjected to the same pressure at the same time," says Marshall, so the size of the product being treated is not a factor in terms of efficacy.

For this reason, whole muscle products and whole hams can be treated, but it is less common because pathogens like Listeria are typically more prevalent in sliced, R.T.E. meats, not whole muscle cuts."There is no shadow effect with high pressure and it will kill pathogens between those slices," Marshall says.

A product's water activity is a factor when using H.P.P., however."If you have a dried product, for example, you need to hold it at pressure for longer because of the activity of bacteria within the product," Marshall says.

Rick Marshall from Gridpath Solutions Inc. was unable to attend; however, his information was presented by David Bunker, also from Gridpath.

And all my focus was on working with prospective customers, not handling booth/show details" - Rick Marshall, Flow International Corporation

"The display was so efficient-traffic flow, ergonomics-by far it was the smartest design at the show."

Making it happen in a high-volume environment is Rick Marshall's mission.

Rick Marshall, president, Gridpath Solutions Inc., Stoney Creek, ON.
...
Rick Marshall recognized the need for automated loading/unloading solutions when he was vice president of business development at Flow International.Based in part on his assessment, the Kent, WA, maker of ultra-high pressure waterjet pumps and tools launched Avure Technologies, which has sold scores of HPP units throughout North America in recent years.Marshall left Flow/Avure in 2003 to launch Gridpath Solutions Inc., where he oversees the engineering of systems to move product in and out of HPP presses.His firm designed and built material-handling solutions for Avure units at Avomex, which manufactures guacamole, refrigerated entrees and other products.Last year Avomex augmented its seven Avure presses with a unit from NC Hyperbaric, Madrid, Spain.Marshall's firm also built the peripherals for that machine, and early this year Gridpath became Hyperbaric's North American sales and support representative.Food Engineering recently spoke with Marshall about the technology's development.

FE: How does extreme pressure denature pathogens, viruses and spoilage organisms?

Marshall: It doesn't crush anything, as many people think.
...
Marshall: The first experiments using high pressure to destroy bacteria in food were done in 1897.
...
Marshall: Hormel applied HPP to prosciutto, which is a high-margin product, and shellfish processors use it because it also shucks oysters and results in cost savings.
...
Marshall: At Avure, we were concerned with selling the high-pressure machine, and the A/E was trying to sell design services costing millions of dollars.
...
Marshall: Flow builds isostatic presses, most commonly used in metal forming to fabricate parts like jet-engine blades.
...
Marshall: Gridpath was working with Avomex's plants in Mexico, installing a validation system for all seven of their vertical presses.
...
Marshall: Most of the maintenance involves seal replacement.
...
Marshall: Processing time is product specific, but if you look at ready-to-eat meat in a vacuum pouch, throughput of 2,000 to 2,500 lbs. an hour on a single machine is reasonable.