How innovative technologies are shaping the future of our food

Pre-cooked food and innovative technologies are transforming the food industry. The global market for pre-cooked food reached a turnover of $484.6 billion in 2023. This corresponds to a notably high average annual growth rate of 5.47% for the years 2024 to 2032. Bizerba is shaping this change with solutions for weighing, food inspection, and labeling, as well as digitalization and automation in the food industry.

New technologies and evolving lifestyles are driving the consumption of pre-cooked products

Whether it's the acceleration of lifestyles, the growing number of single-person households, or - from a global perspective - the increase in purchasing power, there are many reasons explaining the rise of pre-cooked meals and prepared foods. This trend is also fueled by new technological opportunities for the food industry. Innovative production techniques, new types of packaging, and greatly improved logistics: pre-cooked foods can now be produced with increasingly better quality, longer shelf life, and greater variety.

A diversified competition in the market

Therefore, in addition to the well-known classics such as frozen pizzas, new products and suppliers are constantly emerging in the market. For example, pasta manufacturers, who previously only sold dry products, are now increasingly offering fresh pasta. The range of bowls, sandwiches, wraps, sushi, prepared meals, oven dishes, and salad mixes is growing day by day. Manufacturers continuously devise new products to cater to a clientele eager to experiment and often affluent. Manufacturers respond to the variety of new products and types of packaging with innovative production technologies.

The right technology for all production requirements

Requirements vary depending on the product. In the case of single-product lines, such as frozen pizza, maximum performance and minimal downtime are extremely important; for a range of fast-moving consumer goods with different dishes that need to be freshly prepared every day, product changes are frequent. Short changeover and cleaning times are a decisive performance factor. Even very small-scale production is much easier to implement today than it was a few years ago. This extends even to customized muesli blends. Thanks to networking and intelligent data management, each individual package is reliably labeled with its ingredients and allergens.

360° Solutions for the food industry

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

Weighing

Bizerba's weighing controllers reliably help prevent overfilling and underfilling. Especially in the case of processed pre-cooked foods, which already have additional added value, waste reduction is a significant cost factor. Bizerba's necessary weighing technology can be customized and seamlessly integrated into existing hardware and software infrastructures. When metal detectors, X-ray machines, and visual inspection systems are used, suitable rejection systems can be added above, in front of, or behind the continuous scale. These systems automatically remove defective goods - including incorrect weights - from the production line.

Inspection

Automated metal detection, X-ray inspection, and visual inspection are far superior to manual sampling checks that are still often practiced. This holds true both in terms of time and reliability, as items are checked piece by piece and rejected if necessary. Bizerba solutions reliably detect common contaminants such as metal, glass, or plastic particles, depending on the environment and the product. In addition to contaminants, visual inspection can also detect other defects. For example, leaks in closures or illegible, misplaced, or incorrectly printed labels. With proper data management, it's also easier to identify the causes of these production errors and eliminate them for the future. If compromised items leave production, tracking them down poses no problem.

Labeling

From desktop devices to high-performance systems for the food industry, Bizerba's networked labeling solutions and wrappers are available in many variants and are suitable for a wide range of consumer products and packaging types. For sustainability reasons, some current packaging is made with very thin materials. This makes them fragile and requires careful handling. Therefore, Bizerba labelers and labeling systems work smoothly with accurately dosed force. They are suitable for a wide variety of packaging types. Additionally, Bizerba offers the appropriate labels and necessary software from a single provider.

Digitalization

With Bizerba's BRAIN2 industrial software and corresponding software modules, you can centralize your data, streamline processes, and create more transparency. From goods receipt to dispatch; from recording, calculating, and evaluating key production figures, and controlling portioning; to centralized management of system users and maintenance of master data: BRAIN2 and its various BRAIN2 modules bring more efficiency to the production of pre-cooked foods.

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