Stay informed on the latest innovations and technologies in packaging and processing within the food and beverage industry. This category covers the companies, equipment, and materials that are transforming how products are packaged, processed, and delivered to consumers. From sustainable packaging and smart technologies to advanced processing equipment and automation, explore the solutions that are driving efficiency, safety, and sustainability across the entire value chain.
Jarrett Foods, a leading custom poultry processing solutions provider, has named Chantel Carrillo as the new quality assurance manager.
With nearly two decades of experience in quality control within the food processing industry, Carrillo brings a wealth of knowledge to her new role.
“We are thrilled to welcome Chantel Carrillo to the Jarrett Foods team,” says Terry Willis, Jarrett Foods president. “Her extensive experience and expertise in quality control will be invaluable as we continue to provide our customers with the industry’s highest quality custom poultry products.”
Carrillo’s background includes working with several large food processing companies, where she has consistently demonstrated her commitment to maintaining the highest quality and safety standards. Her dedication to excellence earned her certifications in Hazard Analysis and Critical Control Points (HAACP) and Safe Quality Food (SQF).
As quality assurance manager, Carrillo will oversee and implement quality control measures throughout the poultry processing operation. Her primary focus will be ensuring that all products meet or exceed industry standards while adhering to strict regulatory guidelines.
In a recent peer-reviewed opinion piece published in Frontiers in Toxicology, researchers Maricel Maffini and Laura Vandenberg argue that while scientific advancements in toxicology have surged forward, regulatory frameworks in the United States have not kept pace. The authors argue that this disconnect between science and regulation could have dire consequences for public health, particularly in how the risks of synthetic chemicals like endocrine disruptors and persistent chemicals are managed.
Maffini and Vandenberg highlight that “current hazard identification approaches” overseen by agencies such as the Food and Drug Administration and Environmental Protection Agency, “rely on outdated principles and expectations. For example, common testing approaches assume that chemicals are quickly eliminated from the body, something that many PFAS and other persistent organic pollutants have disproven.”
Other assumptions in hazard testing that they argue are erroneous include “that testing chemicals one at a time is appropriate to understand how chemicals act under real-world conditions”, and that “testing on adult animals (or in cultured cells) has been proven to predict effects on developing animals”. Other research backs up their claims (FPF reported).
These assumptions and others in the current regulatory hazard testing regime fail to capture the full range of health impacts associated with modern chemical exposures. They argue that “long-held assumptions… should be complemented—if not completely replaced—with modern scientific principles of toxicology including mixture toxicology, endocrinology, physiology, and immunology.”
The authors call for an urgent modernization of risk management systems, advocating for “nimbler” testing “to account for the growth in knowledge of these fields over the last three decades and the new knowledge that is yet to come as well as the complexity of chemical exposures and new chemistries.” They caution that without such updates, the public remains vulnerable to the subtle yet significant effects of chemical exposures that the current testing regime may overlook.
The article urges “periodic reassessment” to bridge the gap between evolving scientific insights and regulatory practices to ensure that public health is adequately safeguarded in the face of new and emerging chemical risks. “The problems we describe here illustrate a common paradox in US regulatory agencies: they are mandated to make safety decisions based on science that is constantly evolving while the risk management is commonly static.”
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Dive Brief:
Chicago’s United Center, the nation’s largest indoor professional sports and entertainment arena, has a new multi-year agreement with water treatment systems and solutions company Culligan International, which will provide alternatives to single-use plastic water bottles throughout the venue.
As the official water partner, Culligan will offer its BPA-free aluminum water bottles for sale at all concession points. It will also install new water fountains, refilling stations, multi-functional faucets and recycling bins.
A Culligan spokesperson also said the upcoming Chicago Marathon in October will replace all single-use plastic water bottles at the finish line with aluminum bottles for approximately 50,000 runners.
Dive Insight:
Chicago, the third-largest city in the U.S., has struggled to improve its recycling. Its residential waste diversion rate is below 10%. But venues like sports stadiums offer contained areas for messaging and collection, which has made them a popular testing ground for closed-loop recycling and reuse programs, along with other waste diversion innovations such as reverse vending machines or even on-site materials recovery operations.
Chicago is not the first city with an arena to transition away from single-use plastic bottles, though it is the largest. United Center, which recently held the Democratic National Committee Convention, has 23,500 seats, hosts over 200 events annually and is home to the National Basketball Association’s Chicago Bulls and National Hockey League’s Chicago Blackhawks.
In Denver for instance, where aluminum packaging maker Ball has the naming rights to the sports arena, concessionaires transitioned to aluminum beverage packaging. Ball was targeting a 90% recycling rate for its cups. The aluminum was to be collected, bailed and monetized to generate revenue for the arena’s owner and operator, according to Ball. And in Seattle, Climate Pledge Arena hit its functionally zero-waste goal and eliminated single-use plastics as of October 2023.
Beyond sports and entertainment venue settings, aluminum water bottles have become more commonplace, positioned somewhere between a single-use and permanently reusable product, via brands like Path Water. Popular QSR Chipotle announced a partnership with Open Water this summer to offer aluminum instead of single-use plastic water bottles at its locations.
BlueTriton Brands this year launched its water labels, including Pure Life and Deer Park, in aluminum bottles at a higher price than its existing plastic-packaged offerings. While PET is still the dominant packaging substrate in this space, there has been an 83% increase in water packaged in aluminum containers between 2015 and 2024, and aluminum has approximately 36% share across all types of waters, including sparkling and enhanced products, according to data from market research firm Mintel.
revyve, B.V. has launched its next-generation gluten-free ingredient line made from baker’s yeast.
The new egg replacer delivers texturizing functionalities and is fully neutral in flavor and color. This launch will accelerate revyve’s expansion into new food categories, fulfilling demands for clean-label, sustainable texturizing ingredients to replace eggs, especially in gluten-free products. Being allergen-free, the new ingredient enables commercialization in categories such as sauces and potato products, where gluten poses a barrier to entry. Additionally, its neutral flavor profile makes it ideal for flavor-sensitive products, such as sweet baked goods and confectionery.
Eggs are effective texturizers and binders, used in countless food products. However, with increasing emphasis on sustainability and animal welfare, coupled with rising egg prices, the food industry is seeking clean-label, sustainable alternatives. revyve’s yeast-derived ingredients are versatile, providing texturizing capabilities, including gelling, emulsifying, binding and water-holding. Its flagship brewer’s yeast-derived egg replacer contains traces of gluten, leading revyve to develop the new product line based on baker’s yeast.
“During the rollout of our initial brewer’s yeast line, we learned through interactions with food producers that there was still a need for an effective gluten-free egg replacer,” says Suarez Garcia, revyve’s CTO and co-founder. “It also had to be more neutral in flavor yet provide the same functionality as brewer’s yeast across various application categories.”
Kano Labs, maker of the Kroil brand of professional-grade penetrants, has launched Kroil Clear, which is safe for food and beverage equipment.
This new odorless and non-staining food grade penetrating oil features the performance of Kroil’s original formula, with the added benefit of meeting NSF-H1 and Kosher food-safe standards.
“We’re proud to introduce Kroil Clear to the market,” says Kano Laboratories Chief Marketing Officer Joan Duvall. “We’ve combined Kroil’s industrial strength performance, trusted by industrial maintenance pros for decades, with a powerful, food-safe formula that can be applied across industries.”
Kroil Clear works quickly to penetrate and free rusted nuts, bolts, fasteners, shafts, pulleys, joints, linkages and more. It is ideal for planned and unplanned maintenance, as well as equipment disassembly.
“The Kroil Clear product opens up a broad swath of new industry opportunities for Kano Labs, as the product’s applications go well beyond food and beverage processing and packaging,” Duvall says. “Due to its NSF-H1 and Kosher industry compliance ratings and stain-free, odorless formula, Kroil Clear can be used without hesitation in sports and entertainment venues, amusements parks, hospitality and healthcare settings, pharmaceutical production, textile manufacturing, HVAC venting systems and more.”
Key features of Kroil Clear:
NSF-H1 Food Grade Penetrating Oil: Ensures safety in processing and packaging environments with incidental food contact.
Odorless: Designed to be non-intrusive, ensuring it does not affect the quality of food products. It will not permeate the air, making it ideal for use in HVAC air handling and venting systems.
Non-staining: There is no color transfer, making it appropriate for food, beverage and textile machinery applications.
Performance: Penetrates quickly to free rusted and seized metal parts – saving time, money, tools and equipment.
Kroil Clear is available in aerosol and liquid packages. The aerosol is sold in 3, 10 and 13-oz. containers. The liquid penetrant is available in 8-oz. and 1-gal. containers.
Video abstract summarizing key points of the study.
On September 17, 2024, a peer-reviewed scientific article describing widespread human exposure to food contact chemicals (FCCs) was published in the peer-reviewed Journal of Exposure Science and Environmental Epidemiology. This research reveals which chemicals used in food packaging and other food contact articles have been found in human samples, such as urine, blood, and breast milk, and it also highlights significant gaps in biomonitoring and toxicity data. The data are made available in an interactive tool. This FCChumon database was compiled by a team of researchers from the Food Packaging Forum, together with colleagues from four academic institutions.
In a systematic approach, the authors compared over 14,000 known FCCs with data from five human biomonitoring programs, three metabolome/exposome databases, and the scientific literature, revealing evidence of 3,601 FCCs present in humans, representing 25% of the known FCCs.
Certain groups of chemicals have been widely detected in human samples and in FCMs, such as bisphenols, PFAS, phthalates, metals, and volatile organic compounds. Many of these chemicals have hazard properties of concern and have been linked to harming human health.
However, for other chemicals that transfer from the packaging into the food, such as synthetic antioxidants and oligomers, little is known about their presence and fate in humans. In addition, potential hazards of many of these chemicals have not yet been sufficiently investigated.
While there are other exposure sources for FCCs than FCMs, these data will improve the understanding of how FCMs contribute to human exposure. It is also most likely that the actual number of FCCs in humans is even higher because only a subset of FCCs was investigated in detail.
These results aim to help researchers focus on important gaps in our knowledge about how humans are exposed to chemicals and to better understand the health effects of FCCs. “Our research helps to establish the link between food contact chemicals and human exposure, highlights chemicals that are overlooked in biomonitoring studies and supports research into safer food contact materials,” lead author Birgit Geueke says.
All the data can be easily accessed and browsed in the accompanying Database on Food Contact Chemicals Monitored in Humans (FCChumon). FCChumon follows and builds on the previously published Food Contact Chemicals Database (FCCdb) and Database on Migrating and Extractable Food Contact Chemicals (FCCmigex). This work is part of the Food Contact Chemicals & Human Health (FCCH) project.
Reference
Geueke B., Parkinson, L.V., Groh K. J., Kassotis C. D., Maffini M. V., Martin O. V., Zimmermann L., Scheringer, M., and Muncke J. (2024). “Evidence for widespread human exposure to food contact chemicals.” Journal of Exposure Science and Environmental Epidemiology. DOI: 10.1038/s41370-024-00718-2
Health-focused frozen food manufacturer Dr. Praeger’s announced Anita Gogia as chief financial officer.
“I’m thrilled to welcome Anita to the team,” says Andy Reichgut, CEO of Dr. Praeger’s. “Her deep financial expertise along with her proven ability to drive results and build high-performing teams will be strong assets to us. We are confident that Anita will play a significant role in our business going forward as we drive category growth with exciting, disruptive innovation.”
The company says that Gogia brings a wealth of experience from both public and private equity-backed companies in the consumer-packaged goods and distribution industries. She has demonstrated leadership in areas such as corporate and brand financial planning and analysis, sales finance, supply chain finance, mergers and acquisitions, and innovation finance.
Prior to joining Dr. Praeger’s, Gogia served as senior vice president of financial planning & analysis at Imperial Dade, where she spent more than five years. Before that, she held various finance leadership roles during her almost 30-year tenure at CPG companies such as Kraft Foods, PepsiCo and Pinnacle Foods (acquired by Conagra Brands). Gogia holds a bachelor’s degree in finance from the New York University Stern School of Business.
“I am excited to join Dr. Praeger’s at such a pivotal moment in its journey,” says Gogia. “The company’s strong vision, innovative approach and commitment to growth are incredibly inspiring. I look forward to applying my experience and collaborating with the talented team to drive continued success and long-term value creation for the brand.”
How about a cooktop that provides video cooking guides, color images, and more? That’s the idea behind SCHOTT’s new CERAN Luminoir TFT (thin film transistor) display.
At last week’s IFA conference in Germany, SCHOTT announced a new TFT display technology that enabled a full-color touch screen to display high-fidelity video and images. This is a big deal for cooktop manufacturers, who, alongside their customers, typically embrace the sleek black aesthetics of glass-ceramic surfaces. However, using any integrated display would normally mean sacrificing the dark black display associated with high-end ceramic cooktops, as black glass tends to absorb light, making display integration challenging.
However, SCHOTT says they solved this issue by optimizing light and color transmission through the glass-ceramic substrate, enabling the integration of high-resolution TFT displays while maintaining a deep black appearance when the display is off. This allows for the “dead front” effect, which keeps the cooking surface looking clean and like a typical high-end cooktop when not in use, but enabling a multicolor display when activated.
You can see the SCHOTT CERAN Luminoir TFT on display in the video below:
Could this mean the cooktop surface itself has entered that chat as the preferred video display in the kitchen? Maybe, but it’s early. Over the past decade, various appliance and system manufacturers have jockeyed to position their preferred platform as the primary video display of choice in the kitchen. There was Amazon with its digital assistants, GE Appliances with its video-enabled built-in microwave oven, and Samsung pushing its Family Hub fridge with its large digital displays in the door. However, no one has really pushed the cooktop, mostly because the dark-black ceramic surfaces did not make for very good digital displays.
At least until now. We’ll keep an eye on this space to see if any cooktop makers move to integrate this technology and push their ceramic cooktops to become multimedia hubs. At the very least, expect some appliance brands to use this technology to offer visually rich touch-screen user interfaces, and most likely some of these will be on display by this time next year at IFA.
Artificial intelligence in food manufacturing is most likely to conjure up images of robotics on the factory floor for packaging products or autonomous quality assurance devices on the assembly line. However, there’s another area where AI is having an enormous impact on efficiency and profits: the back office.
Accounts payable (AP) has become one of the biggest priorities for automation due to its document-heavy processes and high consumption of time and resources, often pulling employees’ attention away from more customer-facing and value-generating tasks. In fact, recent research shows the AP automation market is set to soar from around $6 million in 2024 to $17 million by 2032, underlying its importance in the digital transformation journey.
Mars is one such company that made the decision to prioritize AP automation in order to keep up with ongoing growth. Maxime Vermeir, senior director of AI Strategy at intelligent automation company ABBYY, helped Mars standardize its AP processes across its global offices. Vermeir has a decade of experience in product and tech, and his expertise in AI enables business solutions and transformation initiatives.
FOOD ENGINEERING sat down with Vermeir to get firsthand insight into the challenges, strategies and results with implementing AI in accounts payable.
Maxime Vermeir is senior director of AI Strategy at ABBYY.Image courtesy of ABBYY
FOOD ENGINEERING: What were Mars’ most pressing pain points prior to automating accounts payable with AI?
Maxime Vermeir: Their accounts payable department experienced challenges that are common for any organization without AP automation: lots of manual data entry resulted in errors and inconsistencies, ultimately demanding a significant amount of extra work that could otherwise be avoided.
These are obvious targets for AI-powered improvement, but additional layers to their challenge were their rapid growth and global scale. Mars would have had to hire 50-75% more people to keep stride with their invoices and needed to find a way to meet that need through automation instead. Furthermore, their existing AP staff is spread out across many different countries, each holding their own tribal knowledge of best practices and regional variances.
In short, their staff was bogged down with data entry instead of steering the starship to boldly go where no one had gone before.
FE: How exactly did AI fulfill this standardization need? What was Mars’ strategy?
MV: It was important for Mars to keep the business side of their organization in the loop throughout this process. That was the catalyst for success with their strategy, which was ultimately to create a core standard that encapsulated how their AP processes should look at a high level with regional variations taken into account. Mars created two documents, each over two hundred pages, describing the details and nuances of their AP functions across respective regions.
Choosing the right AI solution was like designing a new Iron Man suit: combining components of cutting-edge tech into one robust system that could solve this complex problem. They selected a low-code and cloud-based intelligent document processing (IDP) platform that leveraged natural language processing (NLP) and machine learning, through which they could aggregate invoices from over two thousand different vendors into their ERP system. With NLP enabling semantic analysis to contextualize AP vernacular while machine learning enabled the training of AI models on an infinite array of document formats, Mars could extract valuable data consistently with both speed and accuracy.
Using this IDP approach, Mars socialized AI-enhanced invoice-to-pay processes across 20 global markets in 14 different languages.
By weaving AI into accounts payable, Mars was able to pursue strategy and value with staff that would otherwise be allocated to more monotonous back-office responsibilities.
FE: What were the benefits of this initiative?
MV: By weaving AI into accounts payable, Mars was able to pursue strategy and value with staff that would otherwise be allocated to more monotonous back-office responsibilities. IDP significantly accelerated invoice processing and achieved higher straight-through processing (STP) rates, meaning that a large portion of their documents could be processed without any manual intervention from human employees.
Alleviating this heavy document burden meant that they could engage with judgment-based objectives like disputing transactions and other value-added activities that can’t be performed autonomously. Beyond the obvious benefits to efficiency and revenue, this also meant a reduction of monotonous, slogging tasks for employees. With recent survey data revealing that 92% of employees burn up to eight hours a week scouring documents for information, this isn’t negligible; it could be the difference between employees enjoying their roles and burning out entirely.
FE: Should Mars have done anything differently?
MV: Mars’ implementation was both an anomaly and a master class. We saw an atypically rapid pace in their growth, so they had to be particularly strategic with introducing their automation strategy.
They took a great first step by ensuring their finance department was looped in throughout the implementation process. That’s a must-have for guaranteeing the long-term efficacy of AI—it can’t just be from a technological lens. It has to translate to business value and solve a real challenge.
Mars’ global scale and rapid growth presented a challenge because the AP staff was spread out across many different countries.Image courtesy of Mars
While it feels like a superficial answer, the only thing that truly comes to mind is starting earlier. Jumping behind the wheel of the DeLorean and accelerating in a strategic, data-driven direction allows more time for interaction and adaptation with the technology, ultimately giving you a head start toward the future of operational excellence. With AI and automation, you can only really know that it works once you’ve had time to interact with it and see how it fits into the full scope of your organization. Without that hands-on experience, it’s difficult to build a strong foundation.
I’d advise organizations who are strongly considering automating AP processes to be careful in their consideration of solutions and implementation partners, and that they make data-driven decisions as to where AI can play the strongest role.
For example, intensive efforts to organize complex and varied processes into formalized documents could benefit immensely from data-driven tools like process intelligence. By gathering data at every step of a workflow, process intelligence yields the most comprehensive visibility into how processes are completed from end to end. This allows for efficient and accurate representations of core workflows, which could drastically expedite initiatives like Mars’ 200-page documents describing AP workflows.
When I recently joined Mars at an SSON AP Automation Digital Summit, 70% of attendees said they were evaluating or learning about using AI in accounts payable, and I believe this to be a strong suggestion that this growing trend isn’t diminishing anytime soon. Missing the AI train could be a recipe for disaster for any food manufacturer.
Waterloo Sparkling Water has announced the newest addition to its roster, Pomegranate Açaí.
This unique seasonal flavor joins returning fan-favorite Spiced Apple, both available as limited-time offerings this fall. Waterloo’s Pomegranate Açaí and Spiced Apple sparkling waters are ideal to savor straight from a chilled can or in a mocktail.
Waterloo’s Pomegranate Açaí blends vibrant and ripe pomegranate notes with earthy açaí, creating an experience that is both bright and complex. And, back by consumer demand for its third season, Waterloo’s Spiced Apple ignites the warmth of the season with a nostalgic and multisensorial flavor experience of baked and crisp apples, aromatic spices and sweet cider notes.
“This season’s ultimate tailgating lineup has arrived with the debut of Waterloo’s Pomegranate Açaí and the return of our Spiced Apple,” says Kathy Maurella, chief marketing officer at Waterloo Sparkling Water. “New Waterloo enthusiasts and loyal fans alike have seasonal flavors to love this fall as we continue to record the fastest growth in households and loyalty in the competitive set for flavored sparkling water. To celebrate the launch of our new Pomegranate Açaí and the return of our fall MVP Spiced Apple, we’ve teamed up with some of football’s leading ladies. Keep an eye out on our social channels for more on how Waterloo’s limited-time-only sparkling waters this fall are bringing fun and flavor to game day.”
Waterloo moves into this fall launch and the final months of 2024 with strong momentum from two successful product releases earlier this year.
“Flavor innovation and seasonal options are essential to driving growth and excitement for the brand,” says Jason Shiver, CEO, Waterloo Sparkling Water. “Waterloo has the fastest-growing dollar-sales, market share and distribution among the competitive set. Consumers keep on proving the case – as Waterloo continues to deliver full-out flavors that differentiate us on shelf.”
Like all Waterloo varieties, both Pomegranate Açaí and Spiced Apple are free of calories, sugar and sweeteners of any kind. All flavors are made with Non-GMO Project Verified natural flavors and purified carbonated water.
Waterloo Pomegranate Açaí and Spiced Apple sparkling waters are beginning to roll out this month at retailers nationwide, including Whole Foods, Target, Walmart, Amazon, HEB, Central Market, select Costco divisions, select Sam’s Club divisions, ShopRite, Hy-Vee, Raley’s, Fresh Thyme, Cub Foods and more.
