01-Sep-2011 - The fashion factor is one of the reasons investing in packaging machinery remains a priority for the supplier, even with margins under pressure. Take a bag of nuts, for example. One-minute standard pillow bags are all the rage. The next step will be that it has to be a quad seal bag with four corners or a doy pak Fairtrade zipper bag, otherwise the supermarket will cancel the order.
01-Sep-2011 - Mark Twain once said: "Too much of anything is bad, but too much of good whiskey is barely enough." It's a motto that Diageo's Cameronbridge distillery in Scotland takes very much to heart, although perhaps not quite in the way Twain meant and with the inclusion of other spirits such as Smirnoff vodka and Tanqueray gin as well as Johnnie Walker whisky.
01-Sep-2011 - The pig is usually quoted as the example of the most efficient utilisation of raw material in the food industry every part is used apart from the squeal. Now, it seems, seafood is rapidly heading that way. Somewhere in the world someone is making a living out of fish skins, fish heads, fish bones and fish throats. Every bit, in fact, except the gloop.
01-Sep-2011 - Reconciling retailers' expectations of a constant flow of exciting new products with the constraints of production lines has been a dilemma for plant bakers for many years.
01-Sep-2011 - Farley's founded a baker's shop in Plymouth in the 1850s. In the 1880s it began making rusks. In 1962, Glaxo established the Kendal factory alongside the Milk Marketing Board's creamery. It bought the Farley's brand in 1968 and in 1976 consolidated its food business as Farley Health Products, which was bought by Boots 10 years later. In 1990 the Plymouth factory was closed, cereals were moved to Kendal and rusks were co-packed. Then in 1994, Heinz bought Farley's from Boots.
01-Jul-2011 - With frozen food enjoying a renaissance, it looks like Britain is entering a new ice age, reports John Dunn
01-Jul-2011 - There will always be a market for 'light' and 'diet' products, but the biggest trend in weight management today is towards functional ingredients. The contenders hoping to make the biggest splash fall into three basic functional groups: satiety boosters; metabolic boosters and regulators; and fat and carbohydrate blockers.
01-Jul-2011 - The benefits of probiotics for digestion is well publicised, but research on their other strengths is growing, as Anne Bruce reports
01-Jul-2011 - Shaul Shelach, boss of Solbar, one of the world's top soy ingredients firms, talks to Rod Addy about his vision for the company and the industry
01-Jul-2011 - What role is in-pack industrial microwave processing likely to play in the future chilled ready meals market? Paul Gander talks to experts for and against this technology about the likelihood of its adoption in the UK.
01-Jul-2011 - Chocolaterie Casemir is defiantly marching to the beat of its own accordion. When most firms are automating, streamlining and cutting costs, Casemir is looking for ways to diversify revenue sources that allow it to continue making chocolate by hand and using fresh ingredients such as cream instead of condensed milk and real fruit instead of concentrates or syrups. Having supplied most of the top UK hotels for the better part of the decade, Casemir's new ideas include maximising income in the slow season, moving into retail and interacting with consumers through a 'chocolate club', says md James Ecclestone.
01-Jul-2011 - Compared with the optimism expressed in last year's Food Manufacture state-of-the-industry survey, the mood today is far more subdued. This can probably be put down to a combination of factors that are putting the squeeze on Britain's food and drink manufacturers.
01-Jul-2011 - Meet Natures Way, winner of the 2010 Food Manufacturing Excellence award for Fresh Produce and Gary Kilhams, fruit business unit manager, Natures Way Foods.
01-Jul-2011 - The dynamics at large in the sweeteners market are similar to those in a football club. As on the football pitch, in the sweeteners market there is rivalry as each player strives to shine as an individual. But teamwork or combinations of sweeteners is often the strategy that yields the best results.
01-Jun-2011 - Get food industry engineers reminiscing and they'll tell you about a golden age when yogurt was yogurt and there was only one type of cottage cheese. They'd start production in the morning and stop at the end of the day for a good old-fashioned clean down. These days the proliferation of new product variants is unstoppable, whether it's exotic new flavours or varying degrees of fat-free, organic, allergy-aware or value versus luxury lines.
01-Jun-2011 - The popular BBC TV programme, Jimmy's Food Factory raised the image and profile of the UK food industry, according to the new president of the Institute of Food Science & Technology (IFST), professor Colin Dennis.
01-May-2011 - My last assignment before this was managing a strategic project at Kraft’s global HQ in Northfield, Chicago. You don’t get the people factor when you’re doing that sort of work, so my first week here I’ll never forget the feeling of being back in a plant.
01-May-2011 - Retailers are using their own checks to supplement third-party hygiene audits, sometimes as a way of exercising power, says Freddie Dawson.
01-May-2011 - Despite the arrival of the first robot designed for the food industry, the UK still lags behind Europe in the automation stakes, reports John Dunn
01-May-2011 - Sugar reduction is just the start. Confectionery can now claim to deliver benefits ranging from gut health to a good night’s sleep.
01-Apr-2011 - The way food companies do business with their retail customers is changing, as sustainability issues muscle in on boardroom decision making. While the present tough economic climate may be causing some companies to delay making environmental investments, in the longer term a firm's green credentials look set to become a condition of doing business.
01-Apr-2011 - With consumers confused by the proliferation of green labels, Freddie Dawson asks whether a single mandatory approach might be the solution?
01-Apr-2011 - With plans to ratchet up production and the development of its flavoured milk, cottage cheese and Cravendale interests, there’s a lot going on at Arla’s Stourton dairy, as site operations director Steve McAuley reveals.
07-Mar-2011 - As the food industry shifts from synthetically-derived colours, past ‘natural’ ingredients to colouring foodstuffs, we highlight the challenges this is currently creating.
01-Mar-2011 - Brewers enjoy experimenting with hops – and there are more available to them now than ever before...