Steam heat treatment offers a highly effective means of steam-cleaning soils, substrates, composts, manures and growing substrates from fungi, harmful organisms, bacteria and weed seeds. Remediating growing substrates through steam sterilisation is an environmentally-safe, non-hazardous and highly efficient method of combatting invasive species and harmful pathogens in organic media, leading to substantial benefits for horticultural and agricultural businesses.

FlowSteama Vessa and Rova Series’ add big value across a wide range of materials, including; steam “cleaning” soil, topsoil, compost, food waste, green waste, agricultural manures and growing media blends in various forms. Stronga supply FlowSteama equipment and mobile steam boilers for various scales of operation. Contact our sales team today to discuss the scale and scope of your project and let us build your optimal heat treatment system.

FlowSteama empowers clients to improve profits by creating a saleable, reusable material while reducing costs associated with waste disposal and importing virgin products. Discover below the horticultural benefits associated with steam sterilizing growing substrates. Advantages for agricultural, recycling and land remediation groups can be discovered further down this page.

Produce extra crop with clean, revitalised growing substrate ✔; Reduce losses from diseased crop ✔; Reduce import costs or virgin substrate with your own circular growing economy ✔; Save cost on buying chemicals ✔; Reuse & recycle existing growing substrate ✔; Reduce costs associated with disposing of used substrate ✔; Improve nutrient uptake; increasing plant yield & quality ✔; Create ideal conditions for thriving crop ✔; In-house control of growing substrate hygiene ✔; Avoid use of banned, ecosystem-damaging chemicals ✔; Meet increasingly higher health & welfare standards from supermarkets & customers ✔

Transforming contaminated organic material into clean, revitalised growing substrates permits safe reuse in commercial nurseries and greenhouses.

Super-heated steam from high temperature steam boilers eliminates pathogens by heat treating substrates to temperatures up to 90˚C for a user-defined residency time (time-at-temperature). Together with the super-heated, low pressure steam generator, FlowSteama has been proven through lab reporting to reliably kill harmful contaminants and invasive plant species, such as: Pathogenic bacteria ✔; Larvae ✔; Nematodes ✔; Spores ✔; Fungi (moulds & yeasts) ✔; Weeds seeds ✔; Pythium ✔; Fusarium ✔; Rhizoctonia ✔; Other diseases & pests ✔

Steam-cleaned growing substrates can be reused time and time again after each crop or season to produce strong, healthy, saleable products.

In comparison to alternative approaches, such as chemical sterilisation, in-vessel composting and sheet steaming, FlowSteama offers the most efficient, reliable and environmentally-friendly way of treating contaminated soil and growing substrates to comply with quality-control regulations.

Glyphosate, methyl bromide, basamide and other products, which have been used in the past, are now forbidden or considered hazardous to health. Super-heated, clean-steam solutions from Stronga provide an excellent alternative which is environmentally-friendly, residue-free and with no risk of resistance formation. With chemical bans now common across the globe, now is the time to invest in clean steam sterilisation to add significant value to your operation, saving cost while significantly improving profits.

The video below shows the Compact FlowSteama Rova model in action.

Stronga substrate sterilisation systems are well suited for use across a wide range of materials in different sectors. While our core expertise to date has been in providing sterilizing equipment for use in horticulture for heat-treating growing substrates, our technical team offer the same high-level expertise for recycling companies, land and soil remediation groups, industrial applications and agriculture.

Steam sterilizing or ‘heat treating’ growing substrates has consistently proven itself as a plant-protection measure against all weed seeds, pathogens, bacteria and fungi in contaminated growing media. The result is clean, safe, hygienic media that is ideally prepared for growing healthy, high yielding plants with shorter growing cycles. Each horticultural operation has its own characteristics, including scale, optimal growing substrate blend, location and plant type in production. Stronga offer various scales of steam solution to suit your operation. We welcome commercial horticultural operations to collaborate with our technical team to optimise the substrate steaming system for optimal outcomes.

Versatile, flexible and well-proven, FlowSteama offers the most capable, continuous in-vessel sterilisation solution available in the market today; creating clean and healthy output across a wide range of organic growing substrates. Discover the possibilities for heat treating a range of growing media constituents:

Mushroom compost sterilisation ✔; Bark mulch substrate sterilisation ✔; Sphagnum peat moss sterilisation ✔; Coconut coir (coco coir) sterilisation ✔; Soil sterilisation ✔; Topsoil sterilisation ✔; Woody biomass sterilisation ✔; Green waste sterilisation ✔; Animal manure sterilisation ✔; & more ✔

In peat-based growing media situations, growers have an environmental responsibility to respect a precious, finite resource which takes 1,000s of years to form. Currently, the rate at which peat is used in the 21st century is unsustainable. Among other applications, Stronga FlowSteama can be used to steam-sterilise peat for long-term reuse in commercial greenhouses and nurseries.

• Peat is non-renewable – it will run out.
• Peat is created extremely slowly over 1,000s of years.
• Peat bogs are a huge store of atmospheric carbon – far greater than trees.
• Peat bogs support unique wildlife habitats that are destroyed in some unmanaged situations.

There is little debate about the wonderful utility of peat as a growing substrate but there is also currently overuse and mismanagement of peatlands. Among the signficant cost-saving and profit-growing potential for growers, the environmental benefits of steam sterilising peat for reuse as a growing substrate are strong; and Stronga play a small part in facilitating this niche but transformational circular growing economy.

We respect the commercial growers who are pioneering together with Stronga towards a more commerically-viable, resource-efficient future.

Discover below a few "recycling" applications where FlowSteama can be applied to create clean, saleable resource from used and contaminated organic by-products.

• Converting green waste streams directly into valuable, clean, sterilised composts, meeting current standards.
• Empowering recycling companies to convert low grade, screened waste material into valuable, saleable, weed and invasive species free topsoil.
• Remediation of weed and bacteria infested soil fractions, including specific invasive species local to your region, such as Japanese Knotweed or Giant Hogweed.
• Unlocking the potential of lower grade biomass residues, transforming them into clean, saleable resource with clear evidence of sterilization and conformity to local standards.

Impeccable hygiene standards in field-scale operations are becoming increasingly important in food production situations. FlowSteama can add significant value and reduce risk of soil-borne pests and cross contamination when growing potatoes, sugar beet, onions and other root crops.

The risks are particularly high from vegetable cleaning, screening and processing where topsoil needs to be returned to the field after use, but cross contamination of root crop soil also needs to be avoided. Steam sterilization is the answer to protect your crop from cross contamination while economically optimising overall health and welfare standards on your farm.

Intensive poultry farming and pig rearing operations are struggling with increasing regulations relating to the safe disposal of manures with issues including contaminating watercourses and nitrate leaching. After separation, the fibre element of agricultural manures can be sterilised in an evidenced FlowSteama continuous steaming process which reliably kills weed seeds and harmful contaminants, such as salmonella and e-coli.

Sterilising fibre fractions from manures enables producers to create pathogen-free, nutrient-rich soil improver or fertilizer which can be sold with confidence across borders. A key benefit of steam sterilizing agricultural manures is the release of nutrients where cell walls are broken down, enabling more nutrients to be available to the plant, reducing the need for destructive chemical fertilisers.

Continuous soil heat treatment can be used to steam-clean the following agricultural materials, enabling the recovery of phosphates and nutrients with no risk of cross-contamination of crop: Broiler litter sterilisation ✔; Layer litter sterilisation ✔; Turkey manure sterilisation ✔; Separated pig manure fibre sterilisation ✔; Anaerobic Digestion fibre sterilisation ✔; Dairy manure sterilisation ✔; Other animal manures ✔; Green waste crop residue sterilisation ✔; Topsoil residue sterilisation ✔

Contact Stronga today to discuss the suitability of your material with FlowSteama.

For more than 100 years, steam sterilising growing substrates has been successful in horticulture, agriculture and soil and land remediation, among other sectors. Steam sterilisation has consistently proven itself as an effective soil preparation method, providing protection against weeds, bacteria, fungi and other pests, while super-heated steam is widely recognised by scientists as the most effective approach for cleaning infected soils and substrates.

Now is the time to get ahead of the game with FlowSteama, making your enterprise even more profitable and ecosystem-friendly through investing in well-proven, modern heat treatment solutions. Working on sites in North America and Europe, our substrate steaming systems have been proven to produce a completely clean soil improver, well prepared for growing the healthiest plants, cut flowers, strawberries, microgreens and more.

Click the icons below to learn more about the two types of substrate steam sterilisation systems for sale by Stronga.