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food manufacturing

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7 Food Industry Trends to Watch in 2020

The food and beverage industry continues to change rapidly, with 2019 seeing the growth of plant-based foods, health and wellness, and clean label products. 

In 2020, conscious consumerism still remains at the core of industry trends. Consumers are factoring both their personal health and the health of the planet into their buying decisions, prioritizing factors like nutrition, convenience and sustainability.  

Understanding what consumers are shopping for is imperative for food companies to stay ahead of the curve. That’s why we’ve compiled a list of the top trends that will impact the food industry in the new year.  

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The Secret to Optimizing Your Compressed Air System

Credit: Kaeser

Compressed air is a commonly used power source in manufacturing facilities, but it isn’t necessarily a cheap one. Aided by the Compressed Air Challenge movement, which started 20 years ago, users have started treating compressed air as a utility with supply and demand. 

This has led to a greater understanding of how to use compressed air efficiently, but many facilities are still running on systems that are not optimized.  

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Maximizing Drone Technology on Food Plant Construction Sites [VIDEO]

Maximizing Drone Technology on Food Plant Construction Sites from Stellar on Vimeo.

Unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs), commonly known as drones, are revolutionizing the way buildings are designed and constructed. Stellar leverages this technology on our job sites to make projects more efficient, accurate and cost-effective.

Here are some of the ways we utilize drones:

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Get Started with Cloud-based Asset Management in Your Food Processing Plant

You’ve likely heard a lot about Industry 4.0 and the impact of predictive and prescriptive maintenance on the food and beverage industry. It can sound overwhelming, but it doesn’t have to be. In fact, a few basic investments and the right partner can help streamline the way your facility operates and communicates

Food manufacturing facilities are complex and have various ecosystems operating at different levels, including:

  • Raw materials and receiving
  • Processing and KPIs
  • Monitoring (HMIs, PLCs and networks)
  • Inventory and work orders (ERP and PRM)
  • Packaging and distribution
  • Quality, process safety management (PSM) and safety

But all of these systems don’t always talk to each other. In many facilities, an equipment failure triggers a lengthy domino effect: Maintenance staff has to assess the problem, create a work order, check if a replacement part is available and so on.

Does this scenario sound familiar?

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4 Trends Food Companies Must Champion to Thrive in an Age of Disruptive Innovation

If you’re a decision maker in the food manufacturing space, ask yourself these questions:

  • Does your company value sustainability and transparency in its processing?
  • Is your boardroom as diverse as your customer base?
  • Are your company’s leaders listening to those customers to anticipate what they want?
  • Is your company taking tangible steps to be innovative, or does it just say it is?

If you want to thrive — not just survive — in today’s market, you must be answering “yes” to these questions… or at least taking actionable steps toward a “yes.”

The food and beverage industry is changing more than ever before thanks to disruptive innovation, the internet, evolving customer values and more.

Don’t be the next Blockbuster, Kodak or Myspace. The key is to be proactive, not reactive. Where should you begin? Consider these leading trends shaping the industry.

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Plant Steam vs. Culinary Steam vs. Pure Steam: What Food Manufacturers Need to Know

Steam is used in food processing for a variety of reasons from preparing product to cleaning equipment. Common uses of steam in food and beverage facilities include:

  • Blanching product
  • Rehydrating product
  • Sterilizing equipment
  • Steam-in-Place (SIP) to clean pipes

But not all steam is created equal — and there are new developments in steam technology happening all the time. In this post we’ll look at the types of steam used in food processing as well as one innovation known as dry steam.

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How to Design Efficient Product Flow into a New Food Plant

Product flow inefficiencies can create a detrimental domino effect within your food and beverage business. When your processing “chain” has breaks and delays, it can cost money, waste time, jeopardize food quality and introduce safety hazards on the production floor.

In last week’s post, we discussed how to detect product flow problems in an existing facility and how to improve them. Now, we’ll focus on how to ensure a new facility is set up for success from receiving to shipping and everything in between.

The ultimate key to success is designing a plant that is linear so that product moves seamlessly downstream through each of the below steps without interruption.

Let’s take a look at those individual steps and how to optimize each for efficient product flow.

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Improving Product Flow in Your Food Manufacturing Facility

Improper product flow can be detrimental to your food plant’s operations in more ways than one. These inefficiencies can cost money, waste time, jeopardize food quality and introduce safety hazards on the production floor.

In this post, we’ll explore the ways your facility may be at risk and what you can do to improve product flow.

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6 Things to Consider When Designing and Building a Food Processing Plant in China

China’s economy has been on a rapid upward trend for the last 20-plus years. It has become the second-largest economy in the world and is flirting with taking the first-place spot. If your company is in any way, shape or form connected to the global economy, chances are you have some connection to China.

With a growing middle class and upper class, China still finds it extremely challenging to supply itself with the kind of quality and value-added food products that these growing populations want.

This has made it enticing for a lot of U.S. food companies to create an even greater presence in China, usually in the form of establishing their own in-country food processing plant.

If you are one of these U.S. companies planning or contemplating establishing a food processing facility in China, here are some things you may want to consider with regard to designing and building the structure:

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New Year, New Tech: Food Industry Trends to Watch in 2018

Believe it or not, 2018 is just around the corner. A lot happened in the food industry in 2017, including groundbreaking mergers like the Amazon-Whole Foods deal, the first major compliance deadlines for Food Safety Modernization Act (FSMA) rules and the dawn of a new presidential administration.

We know the food industry doesn’t slow down, so what should you keep an eye on as we venture into the new year? Here are some of my top trends to watch in 2018.

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