02-Feb-2012 - Novel concepts for forklift trucks (FLT) are emerging to the point where little seems impossible and new designs and products are appearing from virtually every forklift supplier.
30-Jan-2012 - Cleaning efficiency is under attack. Firms have expanded production schedules, leaving less time for cleaning, while cutting down on water and energy use. This trend has reached a level where firms with older facilities are struggling to maintain standards.
30-Jan-2012 - Will you still need me? Will you still feed me? When I'm 64." So sang The Beatles back in 1967. If you're not concerned about how you're going to be fed when you're 64, then good luck to you. But food manufacturers should certainly be thinking about how best to feed the 64-year-old consumer if demographic predictions are anything to go by. Mintel data indicates that the UK's 60 plus category will grow by 13% to reach 11.85M by 2016. That's 18.3% of the population. Age UK projects even further to the year 2083, by which time it says one in three people in the UK will be over 60, with reduced sight and dexterity.
30-Jan-2012 - Cow shuffling may never make it as an Olympic sport, but dozens of British dairy farmers have taken it up recently on behalf of Robert Wiseman Dairies. They've spent months testing their animals and rejigging multiple herds in order to form an elite squad of cows that produce only A2 milk. Never heard of it? According to Wiseman it's already the fastest growing grocery product in Australia and it will be hitting British shelves this summer.
30-Jan-2012 - Professor Judy Buttriss knew very early in her career that nutrition was where her heart lay. But these days, as director general of the British Nutrition Foundation (BNF), it's not just nutrition research that puts demands on her time. She has to juggle the competing duties of running an organisation dedicated to disseminating sound nutritional information to a world awash with uninformed comment and fad diets much of it emanating from self-appointed celebrity 'experts' and tabloids in search of sensationalist headlines.
30-Jan-2012 - The Paramount 21 story started for me 10 years ago when I was invited down to its former site in Brixham, Devon (I was working for a Marks & Spencer supplier at the time).
01-Jan-2012 - Does stevia have the wings to get the sugar-free/ tooth-friendly confectionery market off the ground? Lynda Searby reports
01-Jan-2012 - Huw Griffiths tells Rod Addy how he took Besmoke from farmers' market to supermarket
01-Jan-2012 - Shadow minister for public health Diane Abbott is no friend of the food industry or the coalition government's health policy. Reports Rick Pendrous
05-Dec-2011 - Since I last interviewed chief executive Paul Berryman in January 2008, the name of the member-based organisation he heads up has changed. It is now Leatherhead Food Research (LFR) rather than Leatherhead Food International. But, more importantly, he has now had the opportunity to embed his planned structural changes. He now sees LFR as an effective bridge between academia and industry.
05-Dec-2011 - We serve the whole of Great Britain from here and will be looking at a significant uplift in our volume more than 20% to 51M cases next year. It will be the first time our output will have been above 50M cases. The plant will have the capability to produce 75M cases by 2014.
01-Nov-2011 - The business started as a hobby in my kitchen when I was living in Lytham St Annes.
01-Nov-2011 - Ernest Hemingway once said: "If you are lucky enough to have lived in Paris as a young man, then wherever you go for the rest of your life, it stays with you, for Paris is a moveable feast." In the case of one of the food industry's biggest events, this is especially true.
01-Nov-2011 - The term 'super fruit' is so overused it's nearly lost its meaning. The popular definition has tended to focus on nutrition and health. But some processors are using the term to highlight fruit that has strong technical uses in manufacturing.
01-Nov-2011 - One critical mark of intelligence, it could be argued, is a capacity for adaptation as lessons are learnt and circumstances change. If so, then a select few of those technologies often bracketed as active and intelligent packaging (AIP) are showing just how smart they really are, as they are taken through some agile evolutionary steps.
01-Nov-2011 - The two big challenges for food manufacturers today are flexibility and efficiency. One minute Tesco wants cartons of freshly squeezed orange juice. Two hours later Morrisons is ringing up for blackcurrant drink. How do you reprogram the production, filling and packaging lines to give you maximum flexibility yet keep changeover times to a minimum?
01-Nov-2011 - The md of Fourayes, Phil Acock, is always on the look out for emerging consumer trends. The ability to stay ahead of the curve is vital in order to prosper in a period of economic hardship and volatility, he says.
01-Nov-2011 - The best thing since sliced bread is a phrase that is unlikely to be uttered by anyone who is involved in the Real Bread Campaign.
03-Oct-2011 - I will have been working here four years this autumn. I started as general manager of The Pastry Case, our pastry business, and moved to this role 18 months ago. Prior to that, I worked for Northern Foods for about 13 years, which is where I started: on their graduate scheme. I have always worked on the manufacturing side.
03-Oct-2011 - What is food packaging for? A simple question. Its job is to contain the food and keep it clean, safe and secure until it is used. It should be easy to handle from production through to distribution and sale. It should enable consumers to identify the food inside and read how to store it properly and use it correctly. And it should be easy to open. Food packaging should also be easy to dispose of, recycle, or re-use.
03-Oct-2011 - Most people would not start a new business in a recession. But Stuart Ferretti, owner and director of The London Fine Meat Company (LFMC) is not most people. In the 12 months since he launched the firm, he has rapidly increased turnover by focusing on "off-the-beaten-track" customers, reliability and a close supplier-client relationship.
03-Oct-2011 - Grimsby has been associated with fish since Viking days. The first training probably occurred then. Today, it's provided by the Humber Seafood Institute (HSI) part of the Grimsby Institute of Further and Higher Education.
03-Oct-2011 - Would you buy a bottle of whisky called anaerobic digestion? Probably not. But it was out there, for a time, compliments of the Bruichladdich distillery in the Hebredean Isle of Islay, Scotland. You can still pick up a bottle online for just under £100.
03-Oct-2011 - National Starch's former European marketing manager Laura Goodbrand described the challenge of producing clean-label food as a "matrix". "You can't simply pull one ingredient and put another one in," she says. "Each one is part of a matrix. It's like a jigsaw puzzle. It's about finding out how ingredients interact to get that jigsaw as tight as it can be when you are taking pieces out and chiselling them down to have a different profile."
03-Oct-2011 - Now in his 90s and bright as a button, Giancarlo Vanini, ICAM's former head of sales, still drives to its office and helps out, having worked for the company since it began in 1946. Anyone who meets him can tell there's nowhere else he would rather be. His unassuming work ethic symbolises the entire business.