Batch capacity register

The question behind almost every freeze dryer purchase is how much food comes out of one batch. 24 machines are listed for sale in Australia with a price attached, and not one of them answers it. No tray area, no dry weight out, no cycle time. The register below publishes that gap line by line, because an absence you can check is worth more than a number somebody guessed.

Published specifications checked 10 September 2026

What is published, and by whom

Every machine in the dataset, counted field by field. The Australian column is the 24 priced listings held in Australian stock. The US column is the manufacturer's own storefront, which sells a 110 volt machine that is not the one sold here, and is shown only to establish that these figures exist somewhere.

One row is zero in both columns. Dry weight out per batch is published by no machine anywhere in this dataset, Australian or American, which means the single number a buyer most wants is not available from any manufacturer at any price. Everything you read about yields comes from owners weighing their own batches.

Tray count is not tray area

Resellers publish a tray count because it is easy to count. It is a poor proxy for capacity, and the manufacturer's own figures show why: the trays are not the same size between models. Across the four US home sizes, tray count rises 1.8 times from the smallest to the largest while total tray area rises 5.2 times. Harvest Right Small gives 700 cm2 of tray. Harvest Right X-Large gives 2,075 cm2 of tray, close to 3 times as much surface for each shelf you pull out.

These are the 110 volt machines on the manufacturer's US store. They are not sold into Australia and they are not the units Australian resellers hold. They appear here only to show what the same company publishes when it writes its own product page, which is the measure of the Australian gap.

Every Australian listing, and the number it gives you

All 24 priced Australian listings, cheapest first. The tray column is the only capacity figure any of them publishes.

The same tray count, thousands of dollars apart

Group the Australian listings by the one figure they all agree to publish and the problem becomes obvious. Seven listings share a tray count of 7, spanning LYVN, Harvest Right, and they run from $10,499 to $16,500, a spread of $6,001. None of them publishes a tray area. A buyer comparing on tray count is comparing the number of shelves, not the amount of food.

Two listings publish no tray count either: Flo-Max FFJ-400 at Flo-Max Pumps and Stay Fresh Freeze Dryer with Industrial Pump (220V/50Hz) at Freezedryers.com.au. On those two there is no published capacity figure of any kind.

Wet weight in is mostly water that leaves

8 Australian listings publish a wet weight, and it is the figure most often quoted back as capacity. It is the weight going in. Freeze drying removes the water, so the weight coming out is a fraction of it, and the fraction depends entirely on what you loaded.

The machine sellers publish no yield at all. The only published ratios in this whole research set come from the people selling finished freeze dried food, who have to state how much water goes back in. Those 6 published pairs run from 3.3 to 5 to one.

Rehydration is not the same question as yield, and the difference matters. A camp meal is rehydrated to an eating weight, which is a cooking instruction. The one published fresh-to-dry figure in the dataset comes from Forever Foods, which states that 9 to 10 kilograms of fresh fruit makes one kilogram of freeze dried fruit.

Cycle time, and what its absence costs you

0 of the 24 Australian listings publish a cycle time. The manufacturer publishes 13 to 35 hours, and publishes the identical range for all four of its home sizes. A range that does not move with machine size is a range driven by the load, not by the hardware: high sugar fruit and anything fatty run long, thin slices of lean food run short.

The practical consequence is throughput. A load at the bottom of that range clears inside a day. A load at the top takes 1.5 days, which is 2.7 times as long, and the same factor applies to how many batches a week the machine gives you. Over a year that is the difference between a machine that could plausibly pay for itself and one that cannot, which is worked through on the cost per kilo page. Without a published cycle time from any Australian seller, a buyer here cannot do that arithmetic before ordering.

What to ask before you pay

Every one of these is a question a seller can answer in a sentence, and none of them is answered on a product page today.

• What is the total tray area in square centimetres? Not the tray count. The area is what limits a batch, and it is the figure the manufacturer itself publishes on its US pages.
• What is the internal tray size? Length by width by usable depth. It tells you whether a tray takes a full sheet of sliced strawberry or half of one.
• What does a full load of fruit weigh coming out? Ask for a real batch, not the loaded weight. If the answer is the wet weight again, the seller does not know.
• What is a typical cycle length for fruit, and for meat? Two answers, not one range. It sets how many batches a week the machine can actually do.
• Is that figure from the Australian 240 volt unit? Specifications quoted from the US store describe a different machine, and the import comparison covers why that matters.

Common questions

How much food does a home freeze dryer hold?

Nobody selling one in Australia publishes an answer. Across the 24 priced Australian listings we could source, none publishes a total tray area, none publishes a dry weight out and 8 publish a wet weight loaded. The manufacturer's US storefront publishes tray area and wet weight for all four of its home sizes, so the figures exist; they are simply not carried across to the Australian product pages.

Does a 7 tray freeze dryer hold more than a 6 tray one?

Not reliably, and not across brands. Tray count and tray area are different numbers. On the four US home models, which are the only machines here publishing both, tray count rises 1.8 times from the smallest to the largest while total tray area rises 5.2 times, because the trays themselves get bigger. Two listings with the same tray count can differ by thousands of dollars and neither publishes an area.

How much dry food comes out of a batch?

No freeze dryer sold in Australia or the United States publishes a dry weight out. The wet weight a manufacturer quotes is the weight going in, and most of it is water that the machine removes. One Australian seller of finished product publishes the only fresh-to-dry ratio in this dataset: about 9 to 10 kilograms of fresh fruit makes 1 kilogram of freeze dried fruit. Meat sits lower, with published rehydration ratios between about 3 and 5 to one.

How long does a freeze drying cycle take?

The manufacturer publishes 13 to 35 hours as a single range covering all four of its home sizes, which means the range is driven by what you load rather than by which machine you own. No Australian listing publishes any cycle figure at all, so an Australian buyer has no published basis for estimating throughput per week.