A UK-based oat producer has enhanced its maintenance practices, minimised downtime, and made significant cost savings by employing Maintenance Management Software (MMS) from Idhammar.

Most of us would recognise Ocado as the world’s largest online-only grocery retailer – shipping more than 260,000 orders every week to customers around the UK. However, as Suzanne Gill recently found out, there is far more to the company than one might, at first, think.

Energy represents both an environmental challenge and a competitiveness issue for many processing operations as, on average, it is the second biggest production cost after raw materials. Because motors account for almost 70% of the electrical consumption of a production site, motorised applications are an important source of potential savings.

For a producer of tortilla chip snacks the complex interaction between controlling the temperature, cooking time and oil replenishment of its fryers is critical to maintaining the high quality of its tortilla chip snacks.

Steam is an important component of meat processing and when Djurdjevic, a Serbian meat production company, wanted to automate the boiler it uses to produce steam the company needed to ensure that its control solution would be efficient and safe.

A flexible SCADA solution has been specified to help keep tabs on the constantly evolving plant and processes at Highland Grains.

William Grant & Sons Distillers are the producers of Glenfiddich single malt whisky which has been created, since 1866, at the Dufftown Distillery in Scotland.

Productivity and profit margins in the food processing industry tend to be lower in comparison to those in other processing industries and to remain competitive many operations are looking for opportunities to increase efficiency in production while at the same time reducing energy consumption.

The introduction of palletizing robots has enabled dramatically increased production levels for one of Britain’s oldest cheesemakers.

A frequency inverter with stall prevention has helped improve efficiency and performance for a range of traditional ice cream making machines, ensuring less product waste and offering savings on energy and water usage for users.

Champagne house Veuve Clicquot now has a smart system that supervises fermentation in 400 fermentation tanks which store its champagne.

A new beer racking plant, supplied by brewery design company, Microdat, has increased capacity at a UK-based brewery to 300 firkins (9 gallon casks) per hour. The power transmission solutions were supplied by Lenze.

igus UK has launched two new blue products, aimed at the food processing industry, which enable manufacturers to produce food that is safe for consumption.

A UK-based biscuit manufacturer has succeeded in improving the quality of its products and potentially reducing the amount of wastage caused by the use of aging slip-ring motors. It has also improved its ability to develop new products, following the installation of a new drive on one of its dough mixers.

Calex has designed a temperature monitoring and alarming system for a flour milling company to help prevent fires and explosions.

The introduction of a Siemens brewery process control system Braumat has enabled the Hofbräu brewery in Wurzburg, Germany to modernise its fermenting and storage cellar operations.

Ice-cream manufacturer, GB Glace, part of the Unilever Group, has reduced costs and boosted process quality thanks to the implementation of a decentralised pneumatics concept. The GB Glace site in Flen, Sweden is one of the company’s ten European ice-cream production sites. It produces around 45 million litres of ice cream every year.

High-efficiency, IE3 class motors look set to save a UK-based pet food manufacturer around £26,000 per year on energy costs for a new odour control facility.

A device that is said to be able to measure and predict how liquids flow under different conditions aims to ensure that consumer products are of the right consistency.

Steve Diggines, business leader – Europe at STICORP, discusses the US Modernization Act and considers its impact on European based food and beverage manufacturers that export to the US.