Effective Production: Process Assessment is Key

For Courtney McSpadden—regional director of APV Asia—the beverage market is a dynamic place. Niche drinks are emerging at a rapid pace. And factors such as consumer base fragmentation, lower margins and consolidation mean that production processes must be flexible and efficient in order to be effective.

AFJ: What are some of the trends you see in the beverage market in Asia?

McSpadden: Mixing and powder recombination is quite important in Asia, because most countries here don’t have a large dairy industry. So most of the milk is made from recombined powder. However, powder recombining is applicable to the wider beverage industry as well. There are a number of critical factors to be considered in powder recombining such as hydration time and residual oxygen content. It may appear like a simple process, but there is a great deal of specialist knowledge in powder recombining and APV has been one of the leaders in this technology for many years. There also seems to be an endless growth in tea drinks, of which there are all sorts of variations on the market. It’s a move away from carbonated beverages. If you look at Japan where there seems to be an endless range of products that come out on the market, with all sorts of obscure minor ingredients offering various medicinal or nutritional benefits, I think we’ll see that trend spreading through the region.

The region’s also moved beyond buying purely on cost and lowcost packaging. We’re seeing some of these niche markets moving away from the simple UHT packaging in bricks or pouches and more towards PET and clear bottles. Of course there’s still a huge commodity market that needs to be serviced, but there is definitely a premium market that is developing in a diverse and rapid fashion. Overall, it’s a very competitive market. There’s a lot of consolidation happening in Europe and elsewhere, and that will happen here. In Asia the sweetened condensed milk market is large and many of the major players want to invest to capture this market. But it’s very difficult to justify investment because the margins are low. Manufacturers are always looking to get more out of existing processes, changing formulations in order to use cheaper raw materials and substitutes. Therefore, anything that improves your process can save you money. APV has recently conducted product trials in its Silke borg, Denmark test facility that have shown a much simpler process can produce the same products as the traditional higher cost process. HOMOGENIZATION AFJ: What are the biggest mistakes manufacturers are making with their homogenizers? McSpadden: In the industry, machines aren’t serviced as often as they should be. We sometimes see failure of major components in homogenizers such as crank shafts, piston arms and the like which should never normally fail. It’s a high pressure machine, so obviously it has quite a high maintenance requirement. This shows the tendency of users to wait for breakdown. But by then you’ve not only lost that component, you’ve probably damaged other parts in the machine as well. Worse, of course, is the loss of product or production capacity until the machine can be repaired. The industry could probably gain a bit more by paying more attention to installation. We often find that customers will say, “Hey this is wearing more quickly than anticipated.” If proper guidelines aren’t followed, they can get excessive wear in their machines or worse, critical failures such as a cracked cylinder block due to cavitation. Customers often don’t know what homogenizing pressure is ideal for their product or which materials need to be specified for key components such as the homogenizing valve. APV can carry out pilot tests for them or offer test machines for longer term trials at the customers factory, and they can look at the results from homogenization at various pressures, temperatures, formulations, etc, in order to work out what gives them the product characteristics they’re after. AFJ: Is this process more complicated in the diary industry? McSpadden:The homogenizer was developed for the dairy industry and so this tends to be where some of the more technically demanding applications are. Usually, milk requires two-stage homogenization because milk fat globules tend to reform immediately after the initial homogenization step. As a general rule, you want to homogenize downstream of heat treatment as fat globules reform after heat treatment and some of the homogenizing effect is lost. This is especially true in aseptic applications. This often means a more expensive machine, but the longer shelf stability typically justifies the additional cost. So these are things that need to be considered as dairy homogenization applications tend to be more specific. When you’re selecting a homogenizer, make sure that you’re getting the right material in the homogenizer valve itself. Specify the application and all the products that are going to be homogenized. Often someone will say, “The product we’re doing is milk.” Then before you know it, they’re doing flavored milk with cocoa and sugar. And this combination will wear a standard homogenizing valve much more rapidly. However, there are alternative materials that can provide much better wear characteristics. It’s very important to know all the valve applications so that the right materials can be chosen. At APV, we’re continually working on valve design and materials to give an optimal homogenization effect, as well as satisfactory valve life. WASTE REDUCTION AFJ: How does APV help beverage producers tackle the problem of waste reduction? McSpadden: Beverage producers are trying to make a multitude of products—the market never seems to be saturated—and this means smaller batches. They’ve got to do a lot of product changes, which inevitably means more waste as a general rule. Whenever you change products you have some interface, some flushing out, more CIP (cleaning in place). If you have residual waste, if you don’t have control over your product formulation, if you’re not purging with water, if you are relying on manual operator intervention then you aren’t reducing your waste. We have a group focused on performance solutions, going into existing plants of our customers and working with their production and engineering staff as a collaborative team. We focus on reducing waste in the process and then sharing the benefits of that. It often surprises people that the initial “big wins” in terms of waste reduction come with little or no capital expenditure. Generally, you can reap big benefits within a few months. AFJ: What are your views on traceability? McSpadden: Regulatory compliance is the often-cited motivation for implementing traceability, but it ignores the real benefits. Often when we’re talking about larger projects, either a green field site or a major expansion, almost every client will ask us about traceability. And the benefits to them other than compliance, is that they are protecting their brand, which is critically important. Having traceability means you reduce the likelihood and severity of product recalls, which is extremely expensive. If you get the traceability into your supply chain, then you have the possibility to control the supply chain much better, control the quality of your finished products, and potentially get better pricing. You have much more visibility in your supply chain. I think a lot of people are missing the benefit of it. Creative Cost Cutting
For McSpadden, waste reduction can be as simple and effective as recovering waste streams. He sees that there is still a lot that could be done, particularly in the juice industry. “If you’re changing different product types, push through the interface into the actual recipe, so you don’t lose anything at all.” He encourages food and beverage manufacturers to get creative. “Think of cheese production. Years ago, people just put the whey down the drain. Today the whey protein isolates, kilo for kilo, are worth more than the cheese itself.” More Information www.apv.com