Marine propulsion technology has been adapted to handle pumpable foods, and the developers are rolling it out to processors on both sides of the Atlantic Ocean.
The genius of Burns' system was not lost on John Heathcote, a British venture capitalist who acquired the rights to the technology and formed Pursuit Dynamics plc in 2000. Years of modification and refinement preceded commercialization early this year of a system that already has been licensed to Coca-Cola Enterprises, Campbell Soup and Greene King plc, a $1 billion British brewer and pub operator. Pursuit Dynamics has invested $14.5 million so far to make the technology appropriate for a range of industries, beginning with food and beverage. Steam jacketed kettles, scraped-surface heat exchangers and high-shear pumps are among the conventional processing systems the units can augment or replace. The absence of impellers and other moving parts and elimination of product burn-on mean minimal system maintenance.