Food & Beverage
Food & Beverage
Microbial monitoring & intelligence for your recirculating water.
In food and beverage production, water rarely flows once and leaves. It recirculates — through CIP loops, cooling towers, pasteurizer and cooker cooling, flume and transport channels, and process-water reuse systems. Every pass re-wets surfaces and gives bacteria and biofilm another chance to take hold.
Conventional plate cultures take 1–3 days to come back — long after that water has already moved through production. ExactBlue closes that gap: rapid, on-site detection of bacteria, biofilm, Pseudomonas and coliforms in minutes to hours, with quantitative trending on the ExactBlue Mobile Lab so you can catch a loop drifting before it becomes a problem.
Recirculating water is where the risk hides
- CIP return & post-rinse water — regrowth and biofilm sloughing after a cleaning cycle.
- Cooling towers & evaporative loops — warm, aerated conditions that favour Pseudomonas and biofilm.
- Pasteurizer, retort & cooker cooling water — recirculated and warm, a classic biofilm reservoir.
- Flume, hydrocooler & transport water — coliform and bacterial load carried onto product.
- Process-water reuse & rinse loops — microbial load that accumulates with every cycle.
Where ExactBlue fits in your workflow
ExactBlue tests drop into your existing quality assurance and HACCP programs, giving your team a fast operational signal between routine laboratory testing.
1. Routine loop monitoring
Use case: Daily or shift-based checks across your loops.
- CIP return, process water, ingredient water and rinse water
- Cooling-tower and evaporative loops
- Incoming and treated water supplies
Benefit: Continuous visibility of every loop — not just the water coming in.
2. Critical Control Point (CCP) screening
Use case: Supporting HACCP and food-safety programs.
- Monitor microbial risk at defined control points
- Add rapid screening between scheduled lab tests
- Strengthen the verification steps in your QA program
Benefit: Faster detection supports stronger preventive controls.
3. Post-CIP & sanitation verification
Use case: After Clean-in-Place or sanitation cycles.
- Confirm a loop is clean before you restart production
- Validate sanitation in tanks, lines, heat exchangers and fillers
- Catch regrowth before it reaches product
Benefit: Reduce the risk of restarting on a contaminated line.
4. Biofilm & Pseudomonas watch
Use case: Targeting the organisms that survive treatment.
- Detect biofilm and chlorine-resistant Pseudomonas in warm recirculating loops
- Find the hotspots that paddles and ATP swabs miss
Benefit: See the resistant risk that standard checks overlook.
From tests to intelligence
The ExactBlue Mobile Lab turns spot checks into a quantitative record — baseline each loop, track the trend over time, and export results for HACCP and GMP documentation. That’s the difference between “we ran a test” and “we can show this loop is under control.”
Why use ExactBlue?
- Results in minutes, not days — SPR gold-nanoparticle chemistry; no incubator, no shipping samples out.
- Detects biofilm and free bacteria — paddles and ATP kits miss biofilm; ExactBlue sees it.
- Sensitive and specific — down to 1 CFU/mL for coliforms and Pseudomonas.
- Audit-ready — ISO 9001:2015 QMS, comparable to lab methods, Made in Canada.
Recommended ExactBlue kit for food & beverage
- ExactBlue Mobile Lab Platform — quantitative reader and trend tracking (the “intelligence” layer).
- ExactBlue EZ Bacteria — 5-minute total bacteria & fungi screen for CIP and process water.
- ExactBlue Pseudomonas — biofilm / chlorine-resistant risk in cooling and process loops.
- ExactBlue EZ Coliform & EZ E. coli — ingress and contamination indicators.