Ideas of sweet corn cobs package and storage

Sweet corn (sugar corn, pole corn) as a delicious recipe is very welcomed by gourmets all over the world. Sweet corn export & import business is an important part of global business, especially in United states, Brazil, Argentina,  Thailand, etc. We can easily find hundreds of exporters of sweet corns by google the keyword ‘sweet corn exporters’.

By all the varieties of exported sweet corn products, the package method are mostly canned/ plastic bags vacuumed.

Corn cobs with well planned vacuum packages can have a shelf life of over 15 months, with well maintained flavor and ingredients. But a good corn cob package requires fast speed processes in 6 hours from plucked from the stalk to sterilization process completed. Sugars in corn start to break down from the time it is plucked, So everything should run fast.

For whole kernel corns, package by cannings is the best quality way to keep the flavor and shelf life. But in some cases, we need to storage the whole corn cobs. 

The whole process of sweet corn cobs storage is complex, starts from material inspection, peeling, cleaning, classification, blanching, cooling, dry and save, vacuum sealing by automatic packing machines, sterilization, then they are ready for sale or further storage.

Step 1. Collect and inspection of corn cobs. Whatever your sources are, you should purchase good quality corn cobs without worms, good shaped, well grown corn cobs.

Step 2. Peeling, cleaning, classifying. Manually or automatically completely these steps to make sure your corn cobs ready for the next step of blanching.

Step 3. Blanching, cooling, dry. According to your food technologist advice, put 0.1% citric acid, 1% salt to the water, water temperature set to 95-100℃, blanching time 10-12 minutes.

Instant cooling is required after blanching, as high temperature will drain water in corn which affect its appearance and quality. Spraying or soaking with cold water for 3-5 minutes, make sure corn cobs temperature lower than 50℃ to get the best packing quality.

Before they corn cobs are packed, make sure they are clean, dry and cooled.

Step 4. Vacuum packing.  For small quantity of corn cobs, we recommend double chamber vacuum sealing machine, so you should put the corns in a plastic bag first, they vacuum seal the bags. The packing speed with this method is slower.

So if you are big company with massive quantity of corn cobs to pack, you’ll definitely need automatic form-fill-seal machines to do the job with package capacity of 15000-25000 packs per day (8 hours)

Step 5. Sterilization. Detailed sterilization standard should be advised by your food quality supervisor according to different corn varieties.

Step 6. Corn cobs are ready for sale or further storage. Before further process, don’t forget to inspect the packages to pick out the bad packs, to avoid further damage to other corn cobs.

Video of corn cobs automatic packing machine from Shandong Kangbeite Food Packaging Machinery Co., Ltd. or email to us.