Cleaning costs
Retailers are forcing manufacturers to increase production for promotions while meeting demands for higher hygiene standards, says Ron Rigby, industrial business manager at LPM, a contract cleaner.
"When I got into the food industry many years ago, there was little focus on cleaning," says Rigby. "It was more about simply getting the product out. Now the large retail consortiums are concerned about the risk associated with a major recall."
Higher retailer auditing standards are an indication of this trend. LPM can no longer turn up at a new facility and start cleaning. Now any new job requires a long period of auditing, inspection and induction before cleaning can begin, Rigby says.
At the same time, retailers and consumers want a greener supply chain, says Dr Peter Wareing, an expert in food factory microbiology and principal scientist in food safety at Leatherhead Food Research. While time dedicated to cleaning is being slashed in favour of production, more stringent restrictions are being placed on the use of water and heat.
"Cleaning requires a certain amount of time and energy to effect a process," he says. "So if you remove an element, others should increase to compensate." The only way to cut time, heat and water is to increase efficiency enabling cleaners to maintain hygiene standards in a shorter time period, Wareing adds.
Improving efficiency
The best way to improve efficiency is to construct a purpose-built facility, says Rigby. Most food manufacturers operate in converted premises that are not ideally constructed or laid out for food production. A factory built with the production process in mind can help facilitate cleaning efficiency enormously, he says. A five-year-old bakery where LPM has a cleaning contract illustrates this, he adds.
"Much of the time spent is dead-time," says Rigby. "For example, cleaners spend a lot of time changing water, fetching supplies and walking from area to area. But this bakery has a simple layout with cleaning stations in each area that have supplies, water and sealed electric outlets."
A purpose-built factory can rid firms of anomalies that decrease cleaning efficiency in converted structures. For example, factories without drains in convenient locations force cleaners to manually remove water. This wastes cleaning time and compromises hygiene standards, says Jonathan Adams, technical operations manager at NSF-CMI, a certifying body and consultancy.
Water removal causes problems with allergen containment and can potentially contaminate previously cleaned areas, depending on the layout of the factory, he adds.
The presence of other pre-existing structures, such as overhead gantries and exposed girders, also provides easy places for food residue to build up and attract pests if not properly cleaned, says Rigby.
Exposed brickwork can lead to the build-up of residues, while caustic solutions, heat and condensation from cleaning can cause structural damage if cleaners are not careful, says Neil Brown, technical director at contract cleaner, The Hygiene Group. Ensuring hard-to-access areas are cleaned properly in a short period, without causing accidental damage, is a daunting task, he adds.
However, many cash-strapped firms will not have the option of moving to a purpose-built factory. There are still improvements they could make.
Rigby says adding plastic cladding to exposed brickwork and covering electrics in sealed plastic units is a simple solution with large benefits. The plastic and covered electricals makes it easier to wash down walls and protects a building's structure. "It helps to make things as efficient as possible considering the very small windows we get to clean in," he says.
Cleaning-in-place
Meanwhile, cleaning-in-place (CIP) systems – processing equipment that can wash itself without being stripped down – might be an option for manufacturers that have to upgrade their production lines.
CIP systems originated in the dairy sector, but manufacturers in other areas are looking at whether the technology is transferable, says Adams. Beverage firms have started to use CIP due to its ability to clean closed pipes. Other manufacturers have also started to examine whether CIP could be used to clean production lines with open conveyors, he adds.
There is more emphasis on CIP in the new sixth edition of the British Retail Consortium (BRC) global standards audit, says Mike Law, chief certification officer at Cert ID, a third-party auditor. The guidance on CIP cleaning has gone from a couple of lines in version five to almost a full, detailed, page, he adds.
Upgrading facilities and equipment can help to eliminate the creation of bio-films groups of micro-organisms of varying types, including bacteria, yeasts and moulds that form colonies and symbiotically live off each other.
Films can form in dog-legged pipes and open conveyance systems, which are common in older, poorly laid-out lines, says Wareing. They can be more resistant to cleaning than normal organisms, due to the way they adhere to a surface and support each other. As a result, they can severely impact cleaning efficiency as well as hygiene standards, he says.
The removal of old production equipment can lead to the build-up of bio-films. When a firm chooses to cap off a connecting piece of a redundant pipe instead of completely removing it, the perfect home for bacteria is created, says Wareing.
"I remember a factory where they had a spoilage problem occurring and they couldn't figure out why. They did a thorough inspection and found a capped pipe that had been in place for so long no current employee could remember its original function.
"They uncapped it and a one-metre column of crap came out. This had been bleeding into the system, causing the issues," he adds.
The removal of bio-films is part of the wider issues facing factory cleaning. Cuts to dedicated cleaning time and energy consumption can contribute to major recalls, such as recent outbreaks of listeria. Although money for investment is hard to come by, new business will be even harder to find for the firm responsible for the next big product recall.
