< Previous30 Food & Drink Internationalwww.fdiforum.netWATER TREATMENTThe water treatment sector is as vulnerableto financial dangers as any other, and will lookto preserve its bottom line whilst alsodelivering a high-quality service. Thoughchlorine and quat are both widely used withinthe industry due to their effectiveness, it’slargely because these chemicals areinexpensive when compared to othercompounds. However, there has been a rise inthe use of stabilised peroxide within theindustry, something that has sparked debateas to whether the chemical is actually a worthycontender to chlorine in water treatmentsystems. Indeed, a growing number of foodHygiene standards in the food manufacturingindustry are gospel, with violations openingthe door to everything from foodcontaminations and product recalls, to sickconsumers and litigious action. In order toensure the upmost cleanliness, manufacturersare putting greater emphasis on the hygienelevels of water systems within foodprocessing plants, deploying newer optionssuch as stabilised peroxide to the ever-faithful ultraviolet. The next bigthing in watertreatment?The next bigthing in watertreatment?30-33_Layout 1 01/02/2018 10:47 Page 1Food & Drink International 31www.fdiforum.netWATER TREATMENTmanufacturers are transferring theirchlorine-reliant water systems over tostabilised peroxide, though it has yet tocatch on en-masse. Paul Abbott, seniorwater treatment consultant atHydrochem UK, argues that theindustry must be open to change. “Stabilised peroxide is dosed into thewater that supplies the food processingfacility, effectively helping to controllegionella, listeria, and evencryptosporidium, which chlorine isn’tvery effective on,” he says. “For thisreason, many food manufacturers havelooked at stabilised peroxide, buthaven’t wanted to touch it purelybecause of the jump in cost.” From a pragmatic point of view, it’seasy to understand this kind of “if it’snot broke, don’t fit it attitude”. Butproduct recalls and food poisoningscandals are getting worse and morefrequent, not diminishing, meaning thatmore rugged hygiene practices must beput into place. “Yes, the stabilised peroxide chemicalis more expensive, but what is rarelyexplored is the abundance of long-termbenefits that make it more costeffective,” says Abbott. “One of thebiggest downfalls of chlorine is that it isvery corrosive at working strength,which causes a lot of wear and tear onwater treatment systems. Stabilisedperoxide, on the other hand, is non-corrosive at working strength, so watersystem maintenance costs aresignificantly lower, and lost productiontime is minimised.”There are a number of otherdrawbacks when it comes to chlorine,as Abbott explains: “Chlorine alsoleaves a taint and taste, which in thefood and beverage industry isn’tacceptable, whereas stabilised peroxidedoesn’t.” One of the other major causes of© Shutterstock/Aleksey Stemmer© Shutterstock/vchal32 Á30-33_Layout 1 01/02/2018 10:48 Page 232 Food & Drink Internationalwww.fdiforum.netWATER TREATMENTatg UV Lights up the Dayla atg UV Technology has supplied a disinfection system for Dayla’s facility at Ross-on-Wye. Traditional water disinfection processes in the soft drinks industry use oxidising biocides like sodiumhypochlorite, chlorine dioxide or ozone. However, in the presence of organic matter, even at lowconcentrations, chlorine-based chemicals can produce a range of potentially carcinogenic by-products,whilst ozone can generate bromates from bromide in the raw water. All of these by-products will passthrough reverse osmosis membranes into the product water. “All the water we use is purified by reverse osmosis,” said Dayla’s Technical Manager, Darren Atkins,“so we opted for UV to avoid any of the problems associated with disinfection by-products.” atg’s solution was a SX-225-8 UV system capable of delivering a UV Dose of 120mJ/m2 into a flow ofup to 20 m3/hr of purified water with UV Transmittance 98%, ensuring a 4-log inactivation ofcryptosporidium and adenoviruses and 5-log (99.999%) reduction in viable bacteria. For more information, visit www.atguv.com.consternation amongst businessesacross the board in recent years isenvironmental. Spurred on by their ownsense of responsibility, responding toconsumers or conforming toregulations, food manufacturers arehelping to make the supply chain moreenvironmentally friendly. Althoughagriculture and processing have bornethe brunt of this debate in the foodindustry, water treatment has atremendous footprint. Switching toperoxide, Abbott argues, can help theindustry get that much greener. “The use of stabilised peroxide alsohelps elevate sites to a higher standard.For a site to reach gold standard andbe the best of the best, auditors needto see that hygiene levels are superiorand that significant effort to lower theenvironmental impact is made,” he says.“Stabilised Peroxide is a lot moreenvironmentally friendly than chlorineand the amount of harmful residualchemicals within products is going tobe drastically reduced with its use. Italso releases no harmful chemicals andis safe to handle.”He adds: “Food manufacturersHydrochem have worked with toconvert their chemicals have allexperienced a major reduction inbacterial fails taken during routinequality sampling on the water system.In a food factory, less fails means lesslost time, which means moreproductivity and more profit. Thesebenefits will help companies to winmore new contracts as they will berecognised as a cleaner, moreenvironmentally friendly site.”Stabilised peroxide as an evengreater impact when coupled withultraviolet (UV). “Even larger financialsavings can be made if the swap tostabilised peroxide is accompanied bythe installation of a UV water treatmentsystem,” Abbott says. “Exposing waterto the correct amount of UV light canlead to savings of up to 85% on30-33_Layout 1 01/02/2018 10:48 Page 3Aqua Enviro identifyareas to reduce waterconsumption andimprove wastewatertreatmentThe food and beverage sectorwill soon be impacted by theimplementation of the EU BREFlegislation. The key impact of thiswill be the requirement todemonstrate competence indelivering environmental compliance as well as efficiencylimits around the use/treatment of water and waste. Thisposes a huge opportunity as the purpose of BREF is typicallycomplimentary to most company’s Corporate sustainabilitytargets.BREF may drive investment in efficiencies across thewater/waste cycle as well as in end of pipe treatmenttechnologies which can also offer the potential forresource/value recovery. It can also provide a platform formore innovative approaches to waste valorisation at eachstage of the production process.Aqua Enviro has worked within the food and beveragesector for over 20 years’, providing the first step in identifyingareas for improvement via undertaking a water, effluent andwaste audit focusing on water reuse, waste and effluenttreatment.Key findings from the investigation include a cost benefitanalysis for solutions to reuse water and treat waste andeffluent streams. Once the initial investigation is completeAqua Enviro will support any ongoing works to ensure thedesired benefits are achieved.For more information, visit www.aquaenviro.co.uk or call Aqua Enviro’s Technical Sales Manager Andy Burgess on +44(0) 1924 242255, or email andyburgess@aquaenviro.co.uk.Food & Drink International 33www.fdiforum.netWATER TREATMENTperoxide costs, which makes using the chemical avery attractive alternative.”Even at a domestic level, a UV water purificationsystem can destroy 99.9 per cent of waterbornemicroorganisms in a single pass. UV is alsoenvironmentally-friendly and results in nodisinfection by-products. Moreover, its electricalneeds are low, meaning it is able to run consistentlyin order to keep water safe, as well as wasting nowater. Using the correct and consistent dosage, UVtreatment has been proven to deactivate the entirerogue’s gallery of microorganisms attributed tospoilage – including viruses, bacteria and moulds. Ina triumph for health and safety, the technology wasalso shown to switch-off microorganisms resistant topasteurisation. Coupled with stabilised peroxide,perhaps the food industry finally has a silver bulleton its hands.© Shutterstock/Max Maier30-33_Layout 1 01/02/2018 10:48 Page 434 Food & Drink Internationalwww.fdiforum.netLABELLING, CODING AND MARKINGCoding and marking have a number ofchallenges, specifically the wrongfulprinting of date codes and otherinformation on a product. Although notlimited to manual operations, hand-stamping dates and other codes inviteserror simply by virtue of being human.Although automatic systems aren’tinfallible, they are inherently superior to aflesh and blood workforce and far lessprone to error. It’s no coincidence that theindustry is increasingly moving towardsgreater levels of automation andembracing new technologies. This issomething that Sykes House Farm, abutcher and meat supplier based inYorkshire in the UK, understand all too© Shutterstock/StarstuffOn themarkImagine the unassuming starkness of a blankaluminium can. Without its label wrapped aroundits circumference or a date and batch code printedonto its bottom, it’s practically impossible todetermine its interior without opening it. Thisanalogy demonstrates the sheer importance oflabelling, coding and marking in the food industry,but what about the machines themselves? 34-37_Layout 1 01/02/2018 10:50 Page 1Food & Drink International 35www.fdiforum.netLABELLING, CODING AND MARKINGwell, after it swapped out its manualhand-stamping operation for an RF-Liteoffline thermal inkjet coder fromRotech. The meat specialists were originallyhand-stamping date codes ontosleeves destined for retailers which, asone can imagine, was very time andlabour consuming, both of which couldbe better spent elsewhere. Butcrucially, it was also open to humanerror, and wrongly printed date codescould lead to whole batches beingspoiled – therefore eating into thecompany’s bottom line – or harmingthe health of consumers who might beingesting spoiled meat withoutrealising. Like many companies, thishand-stamping was a ticking timebomb, one which eventually went offfor Sykes House Farm. A date codingerror resulted in a costly product recall.As often happens, something positivecan be born from tragedy and therecall was the catalyst the companyneeded to find a more reliable solutionfor coding sleeves for packs of bacon,sausages and burgers. “We wanted to remove the margin forhuman error with a machine on whichthe codes are generated via software,whilst at the same time increasing thespeed of the coding operation to keeppace with our growing retail business,”says Robert Smith, Managing Directorof Sykes House Farm. But finding theright coder was far less straightforwardthan he expected. “A lot of companies use online ink jetcoders to apply date codes. Wecouldn’t do that because with eachorder, the design of the sleeve isdifferent and the coding area is in adifferent position,” he says. “On bacon,for example, the use-by date tends tobe on the back of the pack whereas onsausages it is usually on the front of thepack.”After a two year search, Sykes HouseFarm found Rotech, a Hertfordshirespecialist in coding, marking andfeeding systems. Rotech’srecommendation - the RF-Lite – wassupplied complete with a thermal inkjetprinter. “In developing the RF-Lite, we wereeffectively realising our dream ofdriving the cost out of offline coding,without driving out the quality,” saysRotech Director Richard Pether. “Wewanted to build a coder that was easyto buy, easy to set up and easy to use,bringing the benefits of automatedmarking within the reach of smallerfood manufacturers for the first time.”Labelling, marking and coding is thelanguage of the food industry, givingconsumers, manufacturers and everyother section of the supply chain theinformation they need. Companies arealso exporting more than they everhave before and by launching products© Rotech36 Á34-37_Layout 1 01/02/2018 10:50 Page 236 Food & Drink Internationalwww.fdiforum.netLABELLING, CODING AND MARKINGinto new markets, there comes theneed to conform to their labellingsystems, often in different languages.Therefore, the global market will growalongside the food industry as the morepackaged goods and other productscontinue to gain traction, spurred on bydeveloping economies anddiversification, so too will the need forlabelling and coding machines andequipment advance. A report from P&SMarket Research, for example, claimedthat the global coding and markingsystems market will rise at a CAGR of6.9 per cent from 2018 to 2023. Thereport argued that this growth will bepredominantly driven by the food andbeverage and automotive industries. Continuous inkjet continues to be thebiggest player in the coding andmarking market, contributing in excessof 30 per cent of the market in 2017alone. The reasons for this are legion,with printers of this kind offering agreat many boons to packagers andmanufacturers including high-speedprinting, the ability to print characterson virtually any material – which isadvantageous on oily products – and,crucially, the ability to run for longhours with minimum servicingrequirements, ensuring that largebatches can be coded uninterrupted.The downtime savings are profound,but continuous inkjet is also a costeffective option for manufacturers bothin the food and beverage industry andelsewhere, with this option proving evermore popular in other industries. As inthe Sykes House Farm example above,manual coding simply has no hope ofcompeting or keeping up. There are a number of key reasonswhy the demand for labelling, codingand marking machines is continuing toflourish, some of which we’ve touchedupon in this feature. But one of theprinciple reasons is the deployment ofstringent government regulations.Labelling, in particular, has been a hottopic over these last few years with theconversation centred on country-of-origin and other traceability issues,especially in the wake of continuingfood scandals. And so the market willcontinue to grow in the years anddecades to come. © Shutterstock/Kokliang© Shutterstock/Delpixel34-37_Layout 1 01/02/2018 10:50 Page 3Innovia video explores mineral oilmigration Innovia Films has a range of filmsthat offer up to three years barrier tomineral oil migration, a subject thathas received much media coverage inrecent years. As a complicated topic,there are many different opinions,tests and data for a packagingtechnologist to consider. In an effort to dispel some of themystery, Innovia has produced an in-depth video on the subject. Neil Hudson, Team LeaderChromatography and Gary O’ConnorChromatography Analytical Leader within Innovia’s Research & Development team covers testingmethodology, choices of simulants and additional validation tests undertaken. “This video is a great opportunity for our contacts to see what we do visually. Whilst we continue todedicate extensive research in this area, myself and my colleagues remain available for discussions withfood packers and the wider packaging industry,” said Mr Hudson.To watch the video, visit www.innoviafilms.com.Food & Drink International 37www.fdiforum.netLABELLING, CODING AND MARKINGSimply the B(RC)est! AKW achieve Grade A in BRC auditAKW Global Logistics always endeavour to maintain impeccable operationalstandards; when an audit such as the British Retail Consortium is impending, it’sno exception. In 2017, the BRC introduced new measures for storage anddistribution alongside a rigorous grading system, with security featuring heavilyin key changes.Efforts paid off; AKW have been awarded a ‘Grade A’ for not only thecapabilities of its half million square-foot, COMAH approved, HMRC accreditedwet and dry bonded warehouses and distribution services, but also contract-packing, which provides a plethora of services including gift set kitting, labellingand sleeving, all conducted in clean-room, temperature controlled facilities.Managing Director Rebecca Davies summarised: “We work sedulously touphold faultless quality and security measures; continuous improvement is theepicentre of our values. “We’re delighted to be awarded such an impressive grade. It provesconsistency and dedication is recognised in the industry, giving customers complete confidence in our veracity.”For more information, visit hwww.akwgloballogistics.co.uk.Personalised labels =unique productsPrimera’s LX500e Color Label Printer is the perfectsolution for start-ups, small businesses and also forprinting personalised labels directly in (retail) stores. With its small footprint the LX500e meets therequirement for a compact solution suitable to placeat any point of sale. LX500e is perfect to producebrilliant, full-colour labels on-demand. Fast printspeeds and an optional built-in guillotine-style cutterallow users to quickly and easily print and cut theirshort-run labels. Ordering massive quantities of pre-printed labels isno longer needed, there’s no lead time and no set-upcharges, either. Design changes can be accomplishedimmediately so there’s no wasted inventory as onlythe number of labels is printed that is actuallyneeded.Primera’s UK distributor KTEC GROUP will showthe LX500e on stand H6 of the upcoming Label &Print. For more information, visitwww.primeralabel.eu.Identification & traceability for metalfood production equipmentUniversal MarkingSystems manufacture andsupply a range of low cost,easy to use permanentmarking systems formarking a wide variety ofmetal food processingequipment and conveyorsetc. Mark part nos,date/batch codes, serialnos, datamatrix codes andhigh quality logos inseconds. Mark directlyonto the metal surface with a high contrast black mark ideal for stainless steel andother metals. For nameplates, mark both the nameplate layout and variable datadirectly onto the component all in one operation. It doesn’t deform the surface ofthe metal and eliminates potential contamination that you may get with rivetednameplates. Utilising its latest electrochemical marking technology it is ideal for machineidentification, production machines, conveyor systems, components and utensils.Please contact the company for a free, no obligation sample marking service oronsite demonstration.For more information, visit www.ums.co.uk.34-37_Layout 1 01/02/2018 10:50 Page 4Visit us at the Packaging Innovations Show to see what we can achieveBirmingham NEC 28th February - 1st Marchwww.nationalflexible.co.uk38-42_Layout 1 01/02/2018 10:54 Page 1Food & Drink International 39www.fdiforum.netEASYFAIRS PACKAGING INNOVATIONSWith over 290 exhibitors alreadysigned up, the UK’s largest annual eventfor the entire packaging supply chainwill feature the latest industryinnovations and technologies, alongsidea major free-to-attend seminarprogramme, both with a dedicatedfocus on the food and drink sector.“Every year we work hard to create adiverse show that offers unrivalledopportunities for brands and decisionmakers to come together with leadinginternational suppliers and do business,”said James Drake-Brockman, DivisionalDirector of Easyfairs’ PackagingPortfolio. “This year will be noexception. We have plenty for the foodand beverage market to get excitedabout, with many top supplierschoosing to launch new products at theshow.”Innovation on the show floorJenton International will be launchingbandint 340, its brand-new bandingsystem that can band a product up to340mm wide. The product will bedemonstrated live on stand, alongsideits innovative aluminium packagingautomation for fresh food at the show.Greenearth Food Packaging willpresent its new range of oven-proof,biodegradable ready meal containersmade from paper pulp. The range willbe available with lids and in varioussizes and colours to enhance theaesthetics of products. Graphic Packaging International willbe showcasing Integraflex, whichincorporates the best features of afolding carton and flexible packagingfor an effective on-the-go eatingexperience. The new recyclable concepthas the ability to stand on its own andis a great option for packaging hotsnacks. Paper and cardboard packagingmanufacturers, Graficas Salaet, will belaunching two new products at theshow. Its new Black Pizza Plate and itsStep and Twist Tulip Cups. Also onshow will be its extensive range ofpackaging for the food industryincluding baking cups, paper bags,trays, cake boxes and boards. Falconer Print and Packaging willdisplay its new designs for the drinkand luxury packaging market, whichwas developed using its in-house foilingcapability, innovative embellishments,embossing and the use of differingboxboard. Kotkamillis will showcase its AEGLErange of Folding Boxboards for foldingcarton packaging and the ISLA range ofFood Service Boards for disposablecups and plates. The company alsoplans to launch a range of water-based,dispersion coated barrier products thatare easily recyclable and re-pulpablelive one the show floor.Unbeatable contentIn addition to the packed showfloor,the event also has a full, free-to-attendeducational seminar programme.Headed up by the Keynote Stage,Packaging Innovations’ conferenceprogramme will run across five uniqueseminar stages and feature over 20hours of CPD-accredited content. Thetwo-day agenda will focus on keypackaging sectors including retail,beauty, pharmaceutical and ecommerce,with a dedicated forum for both foodand drink.The food and drinks market will takecentre stage as part of the Keynoteprogramme, which will see presentationsand panel discussion featuring expertsfrom Coca-Cola, Innocent, M&S, ASDA,Tesco, Co-op, Thorntons, Salcombe Ginand The Wild Beer Co. The dedicated ‘Food Forum will behosted by Marin Kersh, ExecutiveDirector of the Foodservice PackagingAssociation and the ‘Drinks Forum’ byFelicity Murray, Editor ofTheDrinksReport.com, delivering insightsinto the key market trends.For more information, visitwww.easyfairs.com/PIUK,www.easyfairs.com/EmpackUK andwww.easyfairs.com/Label&PrintUK.Easyfairs PackagingInnovations 2018 Returning to Birmingham’s NEC on 28 February & 1 March 2018, PackagingInnovations, Empack and Label&Print is set to be the largest show to date, withplenty of innovation for the food and beverage market on display. © Kornelis38-42_Layout 1 01/02/2018 10:54 Page 2Next >