I recently toured our 2022 Plant of the Year in preparation for next month’s announcement and cover story reveal of our winner. While there, I had our July cover story in my head and filtered everything I saw through this question: “What is the state of food manufacturing today?”

In January 2020, I started as the Editor-in-Chief of FOOD ENGINEERING’s sister publication, Refrigerated & Frozen Foods. At the time, I was looking forward to touring cold foods processing plants and learning about the industry firsthand, which in turn, would make our editorial content stronger, because I’d be writing from experience rather than second-hand information delivered via email and phone calls.