Weigh-Before, Weigh-After: A Thaw Yield Record That Survives a Challenge

A customer challenged a 96.2 percent thaw yield figure on a 1,200 case order and asked for the raw data. The plant had the yield number, because the ERP calculated it, but not a single record of an individual case weighed before and after. The claim was settled at a discount not because the yield was wrong but because it could not be demonstrated. Forty minutes of weighing a week would have prevented it.

Thaw yield is the one number that ties pad performance, drip loss and customer confidence together, and it is almost never measured properly. This article sets out a weighing protocol simple enough for a line supervisor to run and robust enough to defend in a customer audit.

What Goes on the Scale and What Does Not

Weigh the product, not the tray, the pad, the film or the case. That means a tare weight recorded for the empty tray plus dry pad, taken once per tray type and written on the tray. A 600 by 400 mm tray with a 400 gsm pad tares at 640 to 700 grams, and that figure must come off both the before and after weights.

Weigh the drip separately. Pour the tray contents into a graduated jug after the product is removed and record millilitres. Product weight change and collected liquid should agree within 10 percent; where they do not, liquid has been lost to the floor or absorbed into the pad and evaporated, and the discrepancy is itself useful information.

The Protocol: Ten Cases, One Week

Ten cases per product per week is enough to establish a baseline and cheap enough to sustain. Take the case weight at intake, on a scale reading to 5 grams, and record it against the lot. Record the same case after thaw, at the moment of release, before any trimming.

• Scale calibrated at the start of each week with a 5 kg test mass.
• Same scale for before and after, to avoid inter-scale bias.
• Product weighed in the tray, tare deducted, tray identified by number.
• Drip poured and measured in a graduated jug, not estimated.
• Surface temperature taken at the same moment, since yield is meaningless without it.

Yield is after-weight divided by before-weight, expressed as a percentage. A 20 kg case yielding 19.34 kg is 96.7 percent.

The Numbers Worth Expecting

Whole muscle beef at 1 to 2 percent drip should yield 98.0 to 99.0 percent. Pork at 3 to 4 percent yields 96.0 to 97.0. Water-chilled poultry at 3 to 6 percent yields 94.0 to 97.0. Fillets at 5 to 10 percent yield 90.0 to 95.0.

A figure outside those bands is a finding, not a failure. Yield above the band usually means the product is still partly frozen, which is a food safety issue disguised as good news. Yield below the band means either excessive drip or water that was paid for and never existed, which points back to the supplier.

Making the Record Defensible

Three things make a yield record hold up. It must name the individual case, not just an average. It must be signed by the person who weighed it. And it must be retained for the same period as the product specification, usually two years for customer-facing claims.

Photograph the scale display for the first ten cases of any new product or new pad grade. It takes no time and it ends arguments.

A yield figure is only as good as the pad that produced it, and a pad that saturates early shows up in the weigh-after number long before it shows up in a complaint. Our SAP pad cores with lot-level capacity data let you tie a yield deviation to a specific delivery.