Processing of liquid food (102) in a system (100) is disclosed. The liquid food (102) is provided from a balance tank (104) to a heat treatment unit 106. The heat treating unit (106) receives and heat treats the liquid food (102) to provide heat treated liquid food (102a). A filter (108) receives and filters the heat treated liquid food (102a) to provide filtered, heat treated liquid food (102b). A packaging device (110) receives and packages the filtered heat treated liquid food (102b). Filtering of the liquid food (102) takes place on a heat treated side of the system (100), as close as possible to the packaging device (110).