Meat
Cooked ham
Indulge in the timeless delight of cooked ham! Discover the secrets behind premium slices -precise production, natural ingredients, and seamless integration for optimal taste and convenience.
Have you ever wondered what makes a premium quality sliced and packed ham?
Producing cooked ham that meets consumer expectations for taste, texture, and shelf life while optimizing costs is no easy task. Processors must balance the need for premium quality with the demand for reduced additives and efficient production. Achieving this requires precise control over every step, from brining and tumbling to cooking and slicing. GEA’s expertise in integrated processing solutions ensures consistency, maximizes yield, and enhances efficiency -helping you deliver superior cooked ham every time.
4mm OptiFlex needles
Exceptionally high number of injection points with unique 2mm OptiFlex material improves brine distribution, prevents bent or broken needles, bone or skin damage and needle marks.
Needle Cassette Design
Patented needle cassette design for complete and tool less change-over for cleaning or replacement within less than 10 minutes.
Slicing blades
Slicer blades with optimized geometry and GEA ResystRed/ ResystGold coating for an even smoother, more accurate cut.
Examples of Cooked Ham products
GEA Cooked Ham production line
Controlled defrosting, consistent brine mixing and storage, precise injection and protein activation, optimized tenderizing and tumbling, slicing, and packaging -GEA can supply a complete cooked ham production line.
Discover a typical cooked ham process
Better defrosting and tempering of meat products with GEA's ColdSteam T: it's faster, safer, more efficient and improves overall yield.
Perfect mixing from light brines up to heavy marinades. GEA MixMaster brine and marinade preparation system offers controlled and efficient mixing with the flexibility to adapt to meet specific application needs. Its functionality is essential for downstream processes, in use with injectors, massagers/tumblers and mixers.
When you produce ham, brine injection can help you add flavor, juiciness and optimize shelf life while increasing yield. It gives food processors more opportunities to variate in product development, answering to market trends and extending portfolio offer.
An even color, a pleasing mouth feel, perfect texture and excellent taste. These are the benefits of marination that add value to your products, and tenderizing helps achieve perfect results. Tenderizing also promotes binding, increases yield and improves color in ham production. GEA has a tenderizing solution based on rotating knife rollers.
Tumbling or massaging optimizes product quality and the consistency of the marinating process. It ensures even brine distribution and softens the structure of the meat to extract maximum value from your product.
Slicing ham products in the most efficient way? Maximize product utilization, optimize output, improved yield and reduced give-away are some of your demands. Our slicing machines are reliable as you can count on, flexible as you need and easy to operate and maintain.
Loading of shingle, stack, zig zag, shaved, interleaved or any contour portions in a most efficient way? Our efficient loading systems feed the portions fully automatically from the slicer to a thermoformer, traysealer or horizontal flowpacker. Furthermore we can provide semi-automatic loading systems as well.
Packaging plays a key role in ensuring quality and hygiene throughout the food supply chain, from production to the consumer. GEA develops thermoforming packaging machines, labeling, marking and automation equipment to meet the high demands of food manufacturers.
One smooth process from beginning to end
GEA One Line Concept
Products & Technologies
Showing 4 of 5
Defrosting & Tumbling
Whether you defrost, melt or thaw using a refrigerator, heating your product or add cold water. It is very hard to control the way your product is reacting and you usually need long time frames to do it.
Injecting Equipment
Whether you produce poultry, ham, bacon or other meat products, brine injection can help you add flavor, juiciness and optimize shelf life while increasing yield.
Slicing
Slicing ham, sausage, bacon, cheese, vegetarian or any other sliceable products in a most efficient way? Maximize product utilization, optimize output, improved yield and reduced give-away are some of your demands. Our slicing machines are reliable as you can count on, flexible as you need and easy to operate and maintain.
Tenderizing Equipment
An even color, a pleasing mouth feel, perfect texture and excellent taste. Tenderizing helps to achieve perfect results in ham production.
Other applications
Downloads
GEA Insights
Blueprint for better: How GEA rebuilt itself
Since 2019, GEA has risen from underperformer to DAX member – one of Germany's top 40 listed companies – by fostering entrepreneurship and turning sustainability into a competitive advantage. It reached this milestone in its nearly 145-year history without tailwinds or shortcuts, in a world of compounding crises. This turnaround shows what's possible when purpose and performance align.
Video: GEA's 2025 year in review
This year was a big one for GEA. Can you remember all the milestones and highlights?
Touching lives, lifting communities
The GEA Foundation launched this year with a promise: to make a tangible difference in people's lives. From scholarships in Germany to clean water in Tanzania, the foundation is already proving that when companies commit to giving back, lives change.
