Inspecting

Convenience grows thanks to innovative production technology

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Boom in convenience: innovations and technology are driving the market

Convenience and innovative technologies are shaping the future of food

The world of food is being transformed by convenience and innovative technologies. The global market for convenience food reached a turnover of 484.6 billion US dollars in 2023. The forecast by 2032: an increase to 782.7 billion US dollars. This corresponds to remarkably high annual growth rates of 5.47% on average for the years 2024 to 2032*. Bizerba is shaping this change with comprehensive solutions for weighing, food inspection and labeling as well as digitalization and automation in the food industry.

New technologies and changing lifestyles are fueling the convenience trend

Whether it's accelerated lifestyles, the increasing number of single households or - from a global perspective - rising purchasing power, there are many reasons for the boom in ready meals and prepared foods. It is also being fueled by new technological possibilities for the food processing industry. Innovative production technology, new types of packaging and greatly improved logistics: convenience foods can now be produced in ever better quality, with a longer shelf life and in greater variety.

Market with diverse competition

As a result, new products - and suppliers - are constantly coming onto the market alongside well-known classics such as frozen pizzas. For example, pasta manufacturers, who in the past only sold dry products, are now increasingly selling fresh pasta. The selection of bowls, sandwiches, wraps, sushi, ready meals, oven bowls and salad mixes is growing daily. Manufacturers are constantly coming up with new products to serve a clientele that is keen to experiment and is often affluent. Manufacturers are responding to the variety of new products and packaging types with innovative production technologies.

Suitable technologies for all production requirements

The requirements vary depending on the product. For mono-production lines, such as for frozen pizza, maximum throughput and minimum downtime are extremely important; for a convenience portfolio with different dishes that have to be freshly prepared every day, there are frequent product changes. Short changeover and cleaning times are a decisive efficiency factor here. Even very small-scale production is much easier to implement today than it was a few years ago. This even extends to personalized muesli mixes. Thanks to networking and smart data management, it is reliably labeled with the ingredients and allergens contained in each individual package.

360° solutions for the food industry

Bizerba supports the convenience industry with hardware and software solutions for weighing, food inspection and labeling, including label material. In addition, there are digitalization and automation solutions with the Bizerba BRAIN2 industrial software and the smart BRAIN2 apps for a wide range of applications.

* Source: IMARC

Weighing

Checkweighers from Bizerba reliably help to avoid overfilling and underfilling. Especially with processed convenience food, which already contains additional added value, the reduction of giveaway is an important cost factor. The necessary weighing technology from Bizerba can be customized and seamlessly integrated into existing hardware and software infrastructures. When using metal detectors, X-ray and visual inspection systems, you can add suitable rejection systems on, in front of or behind the continuous scale. These automatically remove defective goods - including incorrect weights - from the production line.

Inspecting

Automated metal detection, X-ray inspection and visual inspection: they are far superior to the manual spot checks that are still often practiced. This is true both in terms of time and reliability, as items are checked piece by piece and rejected if necessary. With Bizerba solutions, the most common contaminants - such as metal, glass or plastic particles - can be reliably detected, depending on the environment and product. In addition to contaminants, visual inspection can also detect other flaws. These include leaking seal seams and labels that are illegible, incorrectly positioned or printed with incorrect information. With appropriate data management, it is also easier to identify the causes of all these production errors and rule them out for the future. If compromised items do leave production, tracing them is no problem.

Labeling

From table-top devices to high-performance systems for the food industry: networked labeling solutions and wrappers from Bizerba are available in many variants and are suitable for a wide range of convenience products and packaging types. For reasons of sustainability, some of today's convenience packaging is made of very thin material. This makes them fragile and requires careful handling. Bizerba labelers and wrapping systems therefore work gently with precisely dosed force. They are suitable for a wide variety of packaging types. Bizerba also offers the right labels and the necessary software from a single source.

Digitizing

With the Bizerba BRAIN2 industrial software and the matching software modules, you can centralize your data, streamline processes and create more transparency. From goods receipt to goods issue; from recording, calculating and evaluating key production figures to portioning monitoring; from centralized user management of the systems to master data maintenance: BRAIN2 and the various BRAIN2 modules bring more efficiency to the production of convenience food.