< Previouswww.fdiforum.net NPD & INGREDIENTS 20 Brands like Nestlé have scientific divisions on top of their R&D departments. The reality is that the future of food is intrinsically tied to health and lifestyle, and rather than contributing towards illnesses, our food choices can help to cure and maintain it. Our food choices also have a massive impact on the environment. Palm oil is one of the most commonly found ingredients on product labels, featuring in close to fifty per cent of all packaged goods in supermarkets. This includes pizza, doughnuts, packaged bread, instant noodles and chocolate. The reason for this ubiquity is down to the oil’s extremely versatile nature. Semi-solid at room temperature, palm oil is ideal for spreads, while it can help to extend shelf life as it is resistant to oxidisation. As it’s also stable at high temperatures, it can provide fried products with a crispy and crunchy texture, while being colourless and odourless so it doesn’t affect the sensory profile of food products. Yet there’s more to palm oil’s popularity than just this versatility. The crop itself is incredibly efficient, producing more oil per land than any other equivalent vegetable oil crop. For farmers and agribusinesses, this means it’s much more advantageous than, say, canola, corn or soybean. Precisely because of this versatility and the ease at which it can be grown, palm oil is a major driver of deforestation. Combined with the conversion of carbon rich peat soils, this deforestation has led to millions of tonnes of greenhouse gasses entering the atmosphere, contributing to climate change. That’s on top of the loss of habitat and the exploitation of workers and child labour reported in the supply chain. Over the last few years, palm oil has understandably become a controversial topic, with manufacturers and retailers distancing themselves and their products, while some consumers try and boycott the ingredient from their shopping trollies. But anecdotal evidence and ongoing research confirms that palm oil can be produced more sustainably. At present, nineteen per cent of global palm oil is certified by the Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil (RSPO), a non-profit uniting stakeholders from across the seven 18-21.qxp_Layout 1 28/06/2019 11:19 Page 3www.fdiforum.net NPD & INGREDIENTS 21 For more information contact: www.kanegrade.com Tel: +44 (0) 1438 742242 Fax: +44 (0) 1438 742311 Email: info@kanegrade.com Bringing you the tastes of the world... naturally Global Ingredients Supplier • Natural Flavours • Natural Colours • Fruit Pieces & Powders • Veg Pieces & Powders • Nuts and Nut Products • Fruit Juices, Purées & Concentrates • Veg Juices, Purées & Concentrates • Dairy, Meat & Fish Powders • Inclusions for Bakery, Ice Cream • Organic Ingredients sectors of the industry to develop and implement global standards for sustainable palm oil. These standards set best practice for producing and sourcing palm oil and, although there’s still much more work to be done in achieving its aims, RSPO has together with these stakeholders already achieved a lot. Here in the UK, for example, seventy-eight per cent of total palm oil imported in 2016 was sustainable. The current production methods of palm oil are a major hurdle to overcome, but one of the greatest challenges we face is meeting the rising demand for meat products. The growing consumption of animal protein means more landmass will be dedicated to rearing livestock, more resources will be spent in growing feedstock, and there will be an even greater level of carbon emissions. With the global population tipped to reach nine billion by 2050, there’s a pressing need to turn towards a sustainable, scalable and less carbon intensive protein, Insects represent one of the biggest disruptive forces in the food industry in decades. Perhaps the main advantage of insect protein is its versatility; it can be served whole or ground up into flour for a nutrition added ingredient to other food products such as bread and other baked goods. Aside from the regulations needed to implement and scale up the nascent industry, the biggest hurdle facing the market is psychological. Consumers have already expressed disgust at the thought of eating insects in any form, so overcoming these hurdles is hugely important to bringing the market into the mainstream. But the industry is growing and with more companies entering the fray, doubtless it will continue to flourish. © Shutterstock / David Crockett 18-21.qxp_Layout 1 28/06/2019 11:19 Page 4Challenges in the supply chain Efficiency in the supply chain is more important than ever, and yet further demands from retailers are placing strain on distributors. www.fdiforum.net SUPPLY CHAIN 22 22-25.qxp_Layout 1 28/06/2019 11:20 Page 1www.fdiforum.net SUPPLY CHAIN 23 C onsumer demand means the supply chain must now move faster and more efficiently than ever before to enable products on the shop shelves to be as fresh as possible. That would be fairly simple to operate, without the seemingly contradictory requirement to also ensure the supply chain is safe and secure, so customers can be ensured of the very highest standards. New principles in supply chain management are making a major impact on efficiency. The latest routing and scheduling software, for example, helps supply chain managers discover how each low carbon technology will work in different scenarios. While many companies are looking at introducing biofuel, for example, this can be complicated by the added difficulties in acquiring it. New software can calculate how many extra miles will be added to trips for refuelling with biofuel, with the additional mileage set against the required reductions in emissions. This can therefore give an explicit and valuable factor to assist companies in reviewing their carbon emissions - now often a prerequisite - and allow them to formulate effective ideas that best suit their operations. 20 Á © Shutterstock / katix 22-25.qxp_Layout 1 28/06/2019 11:20 Page 2www.fdiforum.net SUPPLY CHAIN 24 With the issues of cost and efficiency under the spotlight like never before, multimodal solutions are becoming more and more attractive to supply chain managers. It’s certainly the case that many companies aren’t following routes that could be more effective - for example, while 63% of containers arrive in the UK through ports in the South East of England, only 10% of large distribution warehousing is actually based there. The vast majority of the items therefore have to travel across the country in trucks that will inevitably ramp up the carbon emissions. The introduction of more warehousing in the right areas will make a difference, as too will the co-operative logistics schemes whereby numerous companies can work together to fill up one lorry with a number of products rather than have dozens travel around half-empty. It’s not just the vehicles on the road that have an environmental impact, either - those confined to the warehouse play an equally important role. The new breed of warehouse management and distribution tools, are however, ensuring complete traceability throughout the entire process. Each item can be monitored, traced and accounted for at every step of the way - and records of all these transactions can be easily made available, which is now often required by retailers in any case, as well as customs and excise. In an industry where supermarkets are demanding a determining point of origin or batch numbers for any recalls within 24 hours, it’s obviously of paramount importance that the traceability systems don’t falter upon reaching the supply chain. Due to the high- profile nature of many large retailers, both in terms of the media and public opinion, retailers are very quick to drop suppliers who show failures or delays in terms of tracing back problems - so having a good system in place can help prevent loss of major contracts. Despite this, however, there are still businesses that are working at a rather slower speed and a recent survey of 250 © Shutterstock / Kzenon 22-25.qxp_Layout 1 28/06/2019 11:20 Page 3www.fdiforum.net SUPPLY CHAIN 25 companies suggested that 26% of those surveyed wouldn’t be able to identify product recall items within four hours, while 11% would need at least a day and 10% wouldn’t be able to carry out those requirements at all. These companies would therefore have no chance when it came to winning major blue chip contracts. Materials handling remains of course a major factor in the supply chain, with the human element predictably being the one with the greatest potential for loss of efficiency. Forklifts, for instance, are a staple of the materials handling industry, with almost every warehouse or distribution centre in the country operating a few at least. What can cause confusion, however, is the wide array of forklifts available on the market, and what roles they might best be suitable towards. Almost all forklifts will come with health and safety precautions such as shielded roofs as standard, but there might also need to be considerations in terms of user accessibility, or even ergonomics. While many may scoff at the idea that ergonomic design should warrant a more expensive forklift system, one should remember that in an average day an operator might move their arm over a thousand times an hour, and their head twice that number. Dragging that out over an eight hour day is going to cause serious strain and fatigue on workers, and while this might not lead to injury, it will certainly have an impact on efficiency levels, as workers begin to pause to loosen muscles or take quick rests - all of which can damage efficiency, and yet can be easily avoided. In many cases the improvements that can be made to the supply chain to increase efficiency are neither overly expensive or esoteric but are simply ones that operators have taken for granted. What is for sure, however, is that with the increasing demands being placed on manufacturers, both by retailers and the general public. The supply chain is going to be facing some serious challenges in the coming years and will remain an important part of the food and drink industry. © Shutterstock / Anatoly Vartanov 22-25.qxp_Layout 1 28/06/2019 11:20 Page 4www.fdiforum.net TEMPERATURE CONTROL 26 T emperature controlled storage and distribution remains one of the most powerful industries in the food and drink industry, with the cold chain accounting for roughly 9% of the £187 billion of sales in the food and drink industry. When it comes to distribution centres which play a key role in the supply chain towards the retail market, the costs of temperature control systems can quickly scale out of control. Therefore, it’s important at all times to focus on methods of efficiently maintaining temperature levels, with as little ambient loss of temperature as possible. At the end of the day, it’s far more expensive to keep air cool, then it is to warm it up. Doors and loading bays create an immediate but necessary breach in a warehouse’s defences, allowing the cooler air inside to escape via convection currents. What’s more, this is an inescapable consequence, as the ultimate goal of these facilities is to store and ship out goods as quickly as possible to their final destination. As such while it might be result in energy savings to install a number of doors between the cold storage facility, and the loading bays. This only slows down the productivity of the workers within, and how soon they can have the stock shipped out. Ultimately it becomes a difficult balance between energy savings, and throughput. The final focus must always be on the efficiency of a distribution centre at its central goal – the storage and distribution of goods. Energy savings must come second to this, though should still be pursued at every opportunity. Air curtains provide a potential solution to this problem, or at the very least minimise the loss of heat at loading bays. A cold store air curtain works by creating a curtain of air that cuts through currents, Temperature control remains a powerful facet of the supply chain, but new innovations in transportation might mean things will be heating up in the industry. Maintaining temperature 26-29.qxp_Layout 1 28/06/2019 11:21 Page 1www.fdiforum.net 27 ÁR0«x x0Á0«³ۭ(Áٳn JJ0«³ For the food & drink industry thermometer.co.uk Cooking • Reheating • Refrigeration • Oven • Grill Helping your business be HACCP compliant Designed & built in the UK, we offer a wide range ȒǔɎǝƺȸȅȒȅƺɎƺȸɀɀȵƺƬǣˡƬƏǼǼɵƳƺɀǣǕȇƺƳǔȒȸɎǝƺǔȒȒƳ ۭƳȸǣȇǸǣȇƳɖɀɎȸɵǔȸȒȅƳƏǣǼɵǝƏȇƳٮǝƺǼƳȅȒȇǣɎȒȸǣȇǕ to the latest in Bluetooth ® & remote WiFi logging THERMADATA® WIFI LOGGER creating a barrier between the external ambient air, and the chilled temperature within a cold store. The greatest benefit of these systems is not just the ability for the air curtain to minimise energy loss through temperature contamination, but also to allow continual access for any workers. There is no door to be opened or closed, and the curtain is safe for workers to travel through as they deliver and 28 Á © Shutterstock / stockfour 26-29.qxp_Layout 1 28/06/2019 11:21 Page 2www.fdiforum.net TEMPERATURE CONTROL 28 remove palletised goods. Not only does this improve general efficiency within the cold store, but it also enables rooms to be kept at varying temperatures – important when a facility might have to cater for a wide range of food products that require different refrigerated temperature levels. Of course there is more to efficiently running a temperature controlled storage facility than plugging up the entrances. Managing stock within the distribution centre can become increasingly more complex, as the temperatures are kept lower. For instance, machinery and systems that rely on battery power can come under risk, as continued exposure to the cold has a negative impact on batteries – typically resulting in 50% degradation to battery life. This can become a larger concern with the recent move towards electric lift trucks and fork- lifts, which can see vehicles running out of juice at inopportune moments. When it comes to workers within these facilities as well, there are a host of new concerns and problems to be aware of, many of which will require some remedial training for companies moving employees to cold store facilities. In the above example of electric vehicles staff need to be made aware that a vehicle which is marked down as having an eight hour battery life, might struggle to manage more than four or five. Changing the labelling on these vehicles can go a long way to preventing problems, alternatively investing in batteries with larger voltages can help minimise the problems. The goal with temperature control in the warehousing industry is almost always to prevent leakage of controlled temperature, while also adapting the workforce and equipment to work within the changed conditions. But what about the transport side of things, which is naturally the biggest chink in the © Shutterstock / 279photo Studio 26-29.qxp_Layout 1 28/06/2019 11:21 Page 3www.fdiforum.net TEMPERATURE CONTROL 29 © Shutterstock / ESB Professional temperature-controlled armour? Refrigerated vans and lorries have been common sights for many years, yet they’ve rarely been able to match up to the safety and control of a dedicated storage facility itself. Simply put, the technology has not been in place to bring the same kind of safeguards a warehouse has, into a vehicle. But that’s not to say companies aren’t innovating in this direction, with some interesting results and implications for the future. Innovation in these industries continues however, and may yet bear fruit in months to come. 9 Thorne Road, Doncaster, South Yorkshire DN21 2HJ. Email: info@limpetheating.com Tel: +44 (0) 7837 337570 or +44 (0) 7710 009500 Web: www.limpetheating.com The Limpet Heating Company Ltd Innovative Heating Solutions for Industry The Dolfin – a unique approach to heating viscous fluids in IBCs Advantages of the Dolfin include: * Lightweight and robust * Microprocessor controlled delivery of heat * Direct heat into the outlet valve for FASTBATCH * Thermodynamic core to achieve Sensitive Product Protection * Carefully designed large-fin area to give maximum heating surface area * Industrial strength food grade Xylon coating for non-stick of viscous products * 240V, 2400 Watts of controlled power delivery * Simple temperature adjustment with adjustment protection * Status and power delivery LED * Optional cleansing station 26-29.qxp_Layout 1 28/06/2019 11:21 Page 4Next >