Hong Kong juice maker first to sample local pasteurizer

MANILA, Philippines – A Hong Kong firm is first in line to use a breakthrough UHT-HTST (Ultra High Temperature and High Temperature Short Time) pasteurizer developed by the Batangas State University.

Tirso Ronquillo, BatSU president, said that SP Growth, a juice manufacturer from Hong Kong that exports to the US market, has availed itself of the services of the UHT-HTST pasteurizer developed by a team of the university’s engineering faculty headed by Allan de Villa.

Ronquillo said that local food manufacturers expressed interest to have their beverage products, particularly coconut water and juice undergo the BatSU pasteurizer.

The UHT-HTST pasteurizer was one of the technologies showcased at the Tech Transfer Day held by the Department of Science and Technology in partnership with BatSU late last month for Region 4-A, or the Calabarzon (Cavite, Laguna, Batangas, Rizal and Quezon) in a campaign for local entrepreneurs to adopt the technologies developed by the DOST’s in-house inventors as well as university researchers that were funded partially or mostly by the department.

The team of BatSU researchers and engineers had received P7.59 million from the DOST-Philippine Council for Agriculture & Aquatic Resources to develop the pasteurizer. BatSU provided counterpart funding of P2.74 million.

De Villa said that as far as they know, their UHT-HTST pasteurizer was the first ever designed and fully assembled by Filipinos, with all parts sourced locally.