Food producers are adopting digital technology in several ways to create value within their businesses. Food production robotics and automation can speed up the manufacturing process and reduce errors. The production time can also be accelerated. One recent innovation is with encapsulation technology. Encapsulation is a process to entrap active agents within a carrier material, which proves useful for improving delivery of bioactive molecules and living cells into foods. This is often used to increase food stability.
Automation can also speed up the food testing side of the process, aiding with laboratory analysis for microbial and chemical safety. With testing, one example is the Assurance GDS PickPen PipetMAX (PPMX), which dispenses reagents for assays and performs the the necessary immunomagnetic separation for sample analysis.
Other developments come with advanced integrated software solutions for trending market developments to enable food companies to remain competitive. Other innovations are with food packaging, such as color-changing labels on food products for consumer visibility on product freshness.
Another area where digital technology plays an advantage is with security. The process of globalization is leading to increased international trade, fueled in part by the demand from consumers for novel and exotic food. This raises issues of security of the supply chain together with increased food safety concerns. Food producers also have to grapple with considerable differences in the regulations of different countries or trade blocks, plus variations with national enforcement. To cope with this digital tracking technology is required together with sophisticated algorithms to manage the food supply chain. With new technologies food manufacturers and distributions can can track product and production information and share it across regions and throughout the value chain. This is helped by platforms like an e-commerce ecosystems (dubbed ‘Encore’), which are cloud-based multi-channel platforms designed to meet the demands for IT infrastructure and services. Many systems are bespoke designs for the food sector.
The digital transformation of food production will begin to impact on many companies and, with this, billions of people, impacting every part of the production and distribution of food supply. The examples highlighted demonstrate why the food production sector needs to adopt digital technologies.
