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The April 2023 issue of FOOD ENGINEERING features Clemens Food Group’s Hatfield North facility 2023 Plant of the Year, Robot and Cobot Technology Transform Food Operations, and much more!
Clemens Food Group’s Hatfield North facility was FE’s 2023 Plant of the Year Award winner for the project team’s vision and execution of improving business while focusing on human welfare.
Construction projects, like stories, tend to follow a regular, logical progression. Delivery systems vary, but they all typically start with a client’s need, selecting a project team, site visits, design meetings, groundbreaking and so on—but in the case of Hatfield North, the project began with the smokehouses.
In February we looked at the available tools to track and trace products throughout the supply chain; that is, what occurs outside a manufacturing facility. But what about keeping track of products within the confines of the plant? That is: Ingredients that come in the door, are combined in a recipe and go out the loading docks. What happens within a facility is easy to track, right?
Todd Meussling, senior manager of market development at Fresh-Lock discusses how investing in innovative and sustainable packaging can be profitable and contribute to food scarcity/food insecurity initiatives.
Packaging technologies like closure systems aim to abate food scarcity and food insecurity by lengthening the after-open shelf-life. Proper packaging design can aid FLW management and be a pivotal tool for food manufacturers to invest to provide profitability, as well as to contribute in the effort to end food scarcity and food insecurity.
According to a research study by Sophos, a UK-based IT security services and hardware provider, cyber insurance policies are changing the way manufacturing is protecting their networks. As ransomware threats keep coming, companies are buying cyber insurance policies to protect against costly ransomware attacks that can drive them out of business. Seventy percent of hacked food and beverage companies will go out of business within a year of the attack, according to Capstone Logistics.
Large- and medium-sized food companies are struggling to find workers and this trend is not going away. So food manufactures are turning to robot/cobot applications to solve new and old problems on the plant floor, while increasing productivity in the post-covid workforce.
Small- and mid-size food businesses/manufacturers (SMBs) are in dire need of automated solutions for end-of-line packaging, primary packaging or processing. “Graybeards” have a considerable presence in manufacturing, and “10,000 boomers reach retirement age every day and represent 27% of the U.S. manufacturing workforce,” according to 2022 Bureau of Labor, Delottie and PEW Research. Plus, companies are experiencing a skills gap with the existing workforce, while also having challenges attracting younger workers to manufacturing jobs.
You’ve automated your process and packaging and have computer-generated paper trails to show food safety and quality throughout your facility. Why wouldn’t you do the same with cleaning—wherever it’s practical? Granted, there are certain pieces of equipment you just have to take out of the process to clean manually, but for other components—like piping, some conveyor belting, certain pumps, mixers, tanks and other equipment—you can clean them in place (CIP) and have automated recordkeeping to show proof of cleaning and sanitation to regulating bodies when they ask.
