RETSCH Mills Used to Grind Entire Packaging Units at Eurofins Laboratories

Eurofins has built a global network of laboratories and competence centers for food and feed analyses. Their range of services includes simple chemical and microbiological tests, nutritive analyses, trace analyses of residues and contaminants, biomolecular methods, allergen analyses, analyses of authenticity and origin and many more.

RETSCH mills form an important part of the sample preparation work at Eurofins laboratories. In Hamburg the lab is equipped with two GRINDOMIX knife mills, one ultra centrifugal mill and one cutting mill from RETSCH.

“We achieve very good results for the size reduction and homogenization of foodstuffs with the GRINDOMIX GM 200”, says Matthias Nickel, Team Leader Sample Preparation at Eurofins GfA GmbH, the competence center for POPs, dioxins, PCB, BFR, PFC, etc in Hamburg. “However, the packaging units are often too big for the GM 200. We are happy that RETSCH has now bridged this gap with the new GM 300.”

Whereas the container of the GM 200 has a volume of 1,000 ml, the GM 300 offers a volume of 5,000 ml, so that common retail quantities (e.g. 2,500 g French fries, a whole pizza, salad or cabbage) can be processed in one go. “For ultra trace analyses of organic contaminants stainless steel jars, as available for the GM 300, are an essential accessory”, explains Nickel. “The innovative pre-grinding which is affected by the breaking bar of the knife in the reverse mode accelerates sample preparation of hard feedstuffs such as sugar beet pellets.”

“Due to the fact that we process a great number of different samples every day, quick and easy cleaning of the mills is of utmost importance for us”, adds Matthias Nickel. “We are highly satisfied with this feature of the GM 300 – all parts can be easily removed and cleaned in the dish washer or autoclaved.”