Advanced manufacturing benefits: Overview
- 61% say the food system is unprepared for future challenges
- Manufacturing innovation is becoming as important as farming for food security
- AI, automation and processing tech can boost resilience and cut waste
- Industry wants more government support and investment in food manufacturing
- Longer-lasting packaging is seen as key to strengthening food security
Food security is becoming a buzzword and the “critical middle” of the supply chain – processing and manufacturing – is an overlooked but vital part of it.
Among 500 food and drink business leaders surveyed, 61% feel that the food system isn’t well prepared to meet the challenges of the next decade. However, if advanced manufacturing in the middle of the supply chain is invested in, things can change – 69% of business leaders in Tetra Pak’s Food Fit for the Future report agree that the future of food security will depend as much on advances in food manufacturing as on advances in agricultural production.
“Food security continues to rise up the political agenda, as conflict, climate change and wider global instability place increasing pressure on supply chains,” says the UK’s former Minister of State for the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra), Daniel Zeichner MP.
He adds that the report has identified several challenges that demand attention, such as keeping food affordable, reducing the resources required to produce it, strengthening resilience.
The critical middle
The report focuses on the importance of advanced manufacturing. In food and drink, this includes automation, AI-enabled maintenance and planning, and modern packaging.
An example of advanced manufacturing in action is Arla Foods’ dairy in London. It installed a unit to standardise fat content precisely, and prevent valuable cream being lost. It processes 1.2m litres of milk each day and in a high-volume, low-margin product like this, precision can make all the difference to reducing waste and increasing profit.
Joined-up thinking
One of the report’s recommendations is a Food System Resilience Unit in the UK, a permanent cross-government infrastructure that co-ordinates across Defra, the Food Standards Agency, the Cabinet Office and other agencies to connect food policy and resilience responsibilities. “We feel it’s essential so that everyone is striving towards the same ambition and the same goal,” says Katrin Andersson, Tetra Pak’s managing director for Northern Europe. “We need to have more resilience built in and we need to act on it now.”
“Food security has so many inputs – from fertilisers and energy to processing, packaging and retail,” adds Richard Ali, director of corporate affairs, strategy and stakeholder relations at Tetra Pak. “It’s not a supply chain – it’s a spider’s web. If you just have one department looking at it, you miss the connections. For example, you can have 100% of wheat produced domestically, but if you don’t have processing for the flour, you can’t eat it.”
Innovation investment
Tetra Pak and the wider industry is asking the UK government to recognise food and drink within the Advanced Manufacturing Sector Plan. This would give businesses access to the advanced manufacturing policy architecture that supports other sectors.
However, even then, the sector needs investment to allow companies to pilot, demonstrate and scale new technologies. The report suggests a Food Manufacturing Innovation Fund. This would also go some way to ensuring that advanced manufacturing doesn’t become a competitive advantage for only the largest manufacturers.
Packaging has a major role
The final part of the critical middle is packaging. It’s how food is kept safe and made transportable, and determines its shelf-life. It’s here that it can play a particular role in food security as governments start advising citizens to stockpile food – 63% of business leaders see shelf-life extension through packaging as one of the most effective ways of improving food system resilience.
“Long-life foods and drinks are the future,” says Andersson. “There is an increasing understanding that something is not just fresh if you buy it and eat or drink it immediately.”
Ali agrees. “UK preparedness information hasn’t identified specific products for consumers to stock up on, but in Nordic and Baltic countries, long-life milk or plant-based milk is specified by the governments as something to have at home, along with water,” he says. “It’s a liquid food.”
Beyond packaging
Tetra Pak has long been known for its packaging and more recently for advanced manufacturing solutions, but where does the balance of its future strategy lie?
“Both advanced manufacturing and packaging need to co-exist – we don’t want to have to choose between them,” says Andersson. “Packaging protects products and I think this will become even more important for extending shelf-life. But for efficiency, we will invest in more automation and digital solutions.”
“The packaging part of the business is critically important to our customers and will become more so as we have paper-based, renewable packaging,” says Ali. “Climate change is not going away, so there will have to be a refocus on whether brands use renewables.”
The company is also venturing into other processing areas, including novel foods. It has a recently opened innovation hub in Sweden in collaboration with Lund University, designed to support the development, innovation and commercialisation of biotechnology. “It is utilising our equipment to experiment with things like fermentation and new types of proteins that will be an important part of the next generation of foods,” says Andersson. “It’s in our DNA to be the innovator and wanting to be at the forefront of the food industry. It’s also about future sustainability – how can we ensure that the planet’s population is fed? There must be new solutions.”
