Our Traystor® Crate Systems qualify for the Nova Scotia Live Lobster Quality Certification Program.
Nova Scotia seafood companies with high-quality seafood products can apply for a new certification that will give them a competitive edge in markets all over the world.
The Nova Scotia Seafood Quality Program provides certification for key seafood exports, such as lobster, oysters, sea scallops, Atlantic halibut, and a number of additional species.
The Live Lobster Quality Certification ensures that lobster suppliers, exporters, and harvesters subscribe to handling and holding best practices, while maintaining lobster quality, water monitoring, and traceability.
Certified companies will have access to the Nova Scotia Seafood brand logo for use in marketing and will have access to customized training and marketing to help them grow their business.
Communal crates are only suitable for short-term storage due to the high risk of damage and mortality to the lobsters.
STEP 1 - PURGING
The first step in preparing your live seafood for long term holding and/or transport is to purge them of any waste. The live seafood is graded and placed into Traystor® Crates either by fishers aboard the boat, or once onshore at the purging facility. The crates are placed in a mobile or stationary Traystor® Purge System, where they remain for 72 to 120 hours, while the live product eliminates biological waste and its body temperature is lowered. The Traystor® Purge System has a robust water filtration system for removing the waste from the water ensuring the absolute best quality live seafood. These same Traystor® Crates are then taken to a Traystor® Holding Facility or Distribution Centre where they are acclimatized, if necessary, by lowering their body temperature further for long term holding or shipping. By moving the crates between systems, handling and labour requirements are greatly reduced and stress to the live seafood is kept to a minimum.
The primary cause of degradation and mortality of live seafood is stress. The most common issues are emersion, excess handling, poor water quality and temperature control (due to outdated and insufficient infrastructure), exposure to heavy metals, pesticides, viruses, bacteria, etc., as well as proximity to other seafood (packing density). By developing a system which works to mitigate these stress inducing factors, BioNovations strives to provide suppliers with the facilities necessary to maintain the highest product quality possible. This maximizes consumer satisfaction and ultimately increases supplier profitability by ensuring the health, freshness, and taste of the live product while reducing handling, mortality rates, packaging costs, and thereby increasing the overall market value of the seafood and providing transparency to the industry.
step 2 - holding
An environmentally controlled room is all that is needed to facilitate a BioNovations Traystor® Crate Holding System, as all plumbing is above-floor and included in the design of the system. This allows the holding system to be easily installed into pre-existing rooms in warehouses, restaurants, and holding facilities, etc. without the need for new buildings, significant renovations, or additional construction. Stacks of BioNovations Traystor® Crates are placed over a food-grade catch basin (above or in-floor reservoir), or within a large food-grade plastic tank, such as the Traystor® II tank (3500 lbs per Traystor® II tank). Our innovative Manifold Water Delivery System (MWDS) delivers a steady flow of clean, cold, oxygenated seawater to the top of each stack and the water cascades from crate to crate through specially engineered vents and water flow channels to allow even circulation and oxygenation throughout the entire crate while retaining water, effectively making the crate the holding system itself.
Our patented Traystor® Crate technology was developed for use with our specially designed Traystor® Crate Inserts, which come in a range of sizes and shapes to accommodate various species and size grades and can hold approximately 100 lbs of product. Once the crates are stacked seven high, they provide a product capacity of approximately 154 lbs/ft2/stack. The Traystor® Crate is more efficient than conventional stacks of both the industry standard tote at 95 lbs/ft2 and the IPL Cascade Tray at 94 lbs/ft2 for holding live lobster in stacks 7ft high. The lobster inserts separate the live animals into individual compartments arranged in a honeycomb design to maximize the payload within, while keeping the animals in a vertical orientation and displacing most of the water within the crate. This allows for easy quality control as every animal is visible when the lid is open and significantly reduces handling and stress to the live seafood as the hexagonal compartments hold each individual lobster firmly in place, protecting it from being crushed, punctured, jostled around, or damaged in any other way that may occur throughout its journey from catch to plate. The inserts eliminate agonistic and cannibalistic behavior, as well as prevent abrasions on lobsters that can cause blemishes which can lead to the development of shell disease. The inserts also allow the metabolic rates of the live lobster to be maintained at a low, healthy level by holding them in place. This optimizes the use of storage space within the crate allowing for the smallest volume of water to lobster ratio in the industry, helping to make the system more energy efficient. Once live product is removed from the Traystor® Crate, the plastic insert can be easily removed, collapsed, and placed flat back in the crate so that another identical crate can be nested and stacked inside.