Field of Expertise

Paul Browning is a microbiologist and the owner of Freedom Hygiene Ltd., a technology driven company whose mission is to seek out new technologies and offer innovative solutions for the detection and removal of biofilms in food and beverage manufacturers.

Expertise

Paul has over 40 years of experience working in the food and beverage industries. He started his long career in hygiene with the Nottingham Public Health Laboratory Service as a junior microbiologist and spent time at the Nottingham City Hospital working in pathology, haematology, biochemistry and cytology departments. He qualified as a microbiologist at Trent Polytechnic Nottingham, now Nottingham Trent University and then spent time in the food industry before embarking on a 17 years career with the Diversey Corporation in the UK and Europe developing chemical cleaning business in the food and drinks industries. In 1995 he created his own company from scratch, Pentasol FB Ltd, manufacturing and supplying cleaning chemicals and technical support primarily to breweries and soft drinks plants. Pentasol was eventually sold to CCL and became part of the highly successful CCL Pentasol Ltd before being finally sold to Diversey in 2019. For the last 5 years Paul has devoted his time to assisting food and beverage manufacturers across the UK identify and eliminate the source of microbial infections. The key to his successful record is the introduction of new technology for the detection of biofilms on both open surfaces and in CIP systems and upgrading hygiene programmes including the introduction of enzyme technology for biofilm removal. Paul is proud and privileged to have assisted Campden BRI's 3-year member funded research project on inactivation of food industry biofilms. Freedom Hygiene is an industrial partner with the National Biofilm Innovation Centre (NBIC) at Southampton University.