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Issue 4 2009
1 June 2010
In the food industry, it is possible to use new breakthrough technologies to create a more sustainable production process combined with a substantial decrease of production costs. However, the development of these technologies requires a significant investment of time and money. The latter, in particular, is difficult to secure these days. Fortunately, there are some relatively simple measures available to decrease production costs by five to 10 per cent within a single year. Five are presented in this article. In order to obtain a maximised effect it is important to apply all five to achieve optimal production efficiency.
12 December 2009
Launching new products that require new process lines, a facility expansion or even a new plant at a new location are challenging and complex endeavours in the food industry. An example situation and flow might be as follows:
12 December 2009
PepsiCo UK & Ireland (PIUK) employs over 5,500 people across 13 locations, including the largest crisp manufacturing plant in the world located in Leicester, the Quaker Oats factory at Cupar in Scotland, Copella apple juice bottled at Boxford in Suffolk and a number of other manufacturing, distribution and administration sites. Our core brands are Walkers, Quaker, Tropicana and Pepsi - but our business also includes a wide range of other products, including Planet Lunch, Snack a Jacks and SunBites.
12 December 2009
At Campden BRI, the Department of Baking & Cereal Processing aims to combine science and technology in order to provide technical support for the international baking and cereal processing industries. The success of the Department is based on a broad, practical experience of cereal and bakery technologies that enables it to help customers resolve ingredient and processing problems, and to measure ingredient and product quality.
12 December 2009
For many years, low moisture foods, such as chocolate, were regarded as microbiologically safe due to the inherent product characteristics. Water activity levels below 0.6 would prevent any microbial growth, whereas water activities below 0.85 would prevent proliferation of pathogenic / toxin formation by toxigenic microorganisms[1]. A water activity of >0.6 and <0.85 would potentially allow for xerophilic yeasts / moulds growth that are of importance in spoilage of those foods. In addition to the low water activity, other antimicrobial parts of the ingredients had been thought to contribute to the microbiological safety of those products[2].
12 December 2009
Often, we get in the habit of accepting numbers from computerised displays without regard to accuracy or precision, and when we do evaluate a number, we often look at how precise it is. We forget that we can be very precisely wrong. We don't really pay close attention to numbers from our bank's ATM, a gas pump or a near infrared instrument unless we think they are substantially wrong. We certainly pay closer attention to our bank account but tend to accept numbers from other devices that may have greater monetary importance and higher error rates. In this article, I will give a brief overview of the main sources of error specifically associated with near infrared (NIR) instruments and what effect these errors have on the number displayed. The overall goal is to interpret the numbers correctly. In this article, I use NIR as a general term to include both reflective and transmission instruments.
12 December 2009
While Denmark is renowned for its high-tech agricultural sector, the Danish Meat Research Institute (DMRI) based in Roskilde provides scientific research and consultancy to make better solutions for tomorrow's meat industry. Employing a dedicated team of approximately 100 researchers, DMRI develops advanced knowledge on everything from animal welfare before slaughtering to the ideal processes for packaging meat. It puts this knowledge into practice by developing robots and new, safer products to customers in Denmark and further afield. Director Lars Hinrichsen summarises the challenges and opportunities facing the meat sector and shows how DMRI can help the producers tackle those issues.
12 December 2009
The second and concluding instalment of Pierre Schuck and associates' article on spray drying parameters of dairy products discusses the results and conclusions of their research. The most frequently used technique for dehydration of dairy and food products is spray drying. This is an effective method for preserving biological products as it does not involve severe heat treatment and it allows storage of powders at an ambient temperature.
12 December 2009
As traditional food packaging materials show shortcomings in terms of their environmental pollution impact and in their manufacturing requirements for non-renewable resources, the need for alternative packaging materials and packaging formats is now required more than ever. A major group of alternative and novel materials which possess future commercial potential are those derived from utilised and underutilised food ingredients, or food grade ingredients. Consequently, they provide packaging materials which are not just biodegradable in nature, but which are edible also, thereby presenting greater opportunities for commercial application in a more sustainable manner. Therefore, the potential advantages that such packaging materials have over more current conventional packaging forms used by the food industry are obvious.
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