Process, Controls & Plant Focus on: Cooling 28 | Plant & Works Engineering www.pwemag.co.uk October/November 2025 ICS Cool Energy replaced a critical process chiller for a high-volume seafood line, completing the installation without downtime and strengthening system reliability for continuous, temperature-controlled production. PWE reports. Cooling upgrade keeps seafood production running without interruption When one of the UK’s leading suppliers of freshly cooked seafood products needed to modernise the cooling infrastructure on its main cooked prawn line, the company worked with ICS Cool Energy to ensure the project was completed without affecting production. The aim was to replace ageing equipment, improve efficiency and strengthen system reliability while maintaining continuous operation. The seafood company imports deep-frozen warm-water prawns from South America and Asia. The product is thawed, cooked, rapidly cooled, packed and shipped chilled the same day. With a shelf life of just ten days, any delay or issue with post-cook cooling can compromise both food safety and commercial viability, and adversely affect yield through overcooking and protein loss. The chiller supporting this line was installed in 2008, when the site expanded from frozen-only production to chilled products, in response to rising demand for fresh seafood. By 2024, the unit had reached the end of its reliable service life, with a two-compressor design creating a single point of failure and spare parts becoming increasingly scarce. Failure of one compressor was forcing the remaining unit to operate at maximum capacity, leaving no margin for unexpected load spikes; total failure would halt production entirely. With the line operating at three tonnes of product per hour, 40 to 50 hours each week, even a short outage would have had immediate and costly consequences. Replacement project The replacement project had to be completed without interrupting production, while improving system resilience and enabling energy performance monitoring. The new system needed to be installed without interrupting production; deliver reliability with readily available components; eliminate single points of failure; provide capacity headroom for partial outages; incorporate modern efficiency technologies to support corporate social responsibility (CSR) ambitions relating to energy efficiency and carbon footprint reduction; and integrate seamlessly into existing processes and service arrangements. This was the latest milestone in a longstanding relationship, as ICS Cool Energy has delivered and serviced multiple chillers on the site and remains the exclusive cooling partner for the seafood company’s production lines. ICS Cool Energy delivered and installed a process chiller featuring a maintenance-free hermetic four-scroll-compressor system, matched to the production line’s peak cooling demand, with surplus capacity to maintain performance if one compressor is offline. A dual duty/standby pump arrangement enabled pumps to alternate to extend service life and ensure continuous cooling. Modern efficiency features, including variable speed drives and high-efficiency motors, facilitate energy savings. Preparatory works were completed prior to installation, and the full changeover was executed within a single weekend,
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