Processing technology innovation in the food industry.

INTRODUCTION

The food industry and novel processes The food industry is as old as civilization; and many of its process operations are thousands of years old, such as brewing (developed in Sumeria and Babylon) and baking (developed in Egypt ca. 8000 BC ). The modern food manufacturing industry evolved during and after the Industrial Revolution; Thorne (1986) attributes the beginnings of the industry to the first heat sterilisation plant developed by Appert in France in the early 1800s. Since then the modern food industry has become highly diverse and very large. For example, food chain industries employ 12.7% of the UK workforce (3.8 million jobs), and economic flows through the food chain account for about 8% of UK GDP. Likewise, in 2004/2005 the Australian processed food industry employed over 180,000 people and was the largest manufacturing sector, accounting for 17% of that sector's employment (Australian Government Department of Agriculture, Fisheries and Forestry 2006) and about AU$ 70 billion turnover. Although there are a small number of major multinational companies with global brands (such as Nestle, Unilever, Danone, Kraft and Mars), they have only a fraction of the market, with 99% of companies in the EU market being Small or Medium Enterprises (SME's). Of the 50 largest food and beverage processing companies in Australia, Nestle comes 4th, Unilever 18th, Kraft 31st and Effem Foods (which includes Masterfoods and Mars), 13th (Food Magazine 2007). Also the power of the retail sector's own brands is substantial and growing, reducing the influence and profitability of multinational food companies. This makes the food industry structurally different from (for example) the pharmaceutical or personal care industries, in which the large multinationals tend to dominate the whole industry.

Like other fast moving consumer goods (FMCG) industries, the food industry is driven by and responsive to both customer and consumer trends and needs, such as:

* Safety--clearly all food sold should be safe both in terms of microbiology and toxicology, as well as providing acceptable shelf-life;

* Health and well-being--increasingly consumers are responding to health concerns by seeking food which delivers (or claims to deliver) nutritional and health benefits;

* High quality--the consumer expects food to look and taste good; there is also an increasing impetus towards the removal of additives and clean label/all natural products;

* Convenience--the number of ready meals sold is increasing, as is the percentage of meals eaten outside the home;

* Price--all of the above must be provided at a price the consumer is prepared to pay;

* Environment--this is an increasing concern, reflected in, for example, the move by UK retailers such as Marks and Spencer to minimise their carbon footprint and waste;

* Sustainability--the development of new plant based industries, such as biofuels production, is putting strain on the supply of raw materials, leading to increasing costs.

In a comprehensive foresighting project, 'Cassandra', in 1999, which included contributions from more than 1200 consumers and industry stakeholders, Mercure (1999) identified significant opportunities for the food industry in convenience foods, meals for home consumption, nutritionally functional food, foods for an ageing population, health enhancing products and several others.

Societal trends are very important to the industry; for example the increasing incidence of obesity makes it critical to deliver energy regulated foods with lower salt, sugar and fat levels, which can be done through the redesign of foods and processes (Norton et al 2006). The way in which the industry behaves is changing as a result of environmental, health and obesity drivers, for example the trend to selling small bars of high quality chocolate which are perceived as healthier, and the purchase by major companies of smaller niche 'green' brands (such as Unilever's purchase of Ben and Jerry's ice cream and Cadbury of Green and Black's chocolate).

The industry is highly innovative in terms of products, but much less so in terms of processes. In part, this is because the low margins under which the industry operates, leads to an unwillingness to invest in new plant and processes unless there is a clear benefit and rapid payback. For example, although canning produces a safe and convenient product, the (nutritional) quality can be low; but it still has a very large market share and new canned products and canning process variations are actively researched and developed. There is also resistance to new processes because of the potentially negative responses by consumers--consider for example the failure of irradiation across most of the world and of genetically modified (GM) foods in Europe (although it seems possible that if GM foods convey benefit to the consumer they may be more acceptable, see Spence and Townsend (2006) and Gaskell et al (2004).

A number of novel processes have been suggested which may offer advantages to the consumer, for example:

* High temperature short time (HTST) processing will deliver food of a higher quality than canning, but requires rapid heat transfer to the material; one problem remaining is the time required to cool the food down after heating; thermal conduction is potentially too slow. Alternative HTST heating methods have thus been sought whereby the food is heated volumetrically, for example by microwaves (Knoerzer et al 2006), radio frequency (Marra et al 2007), or electrical current (Zhang & Fryer 1994).

* Also 'non-thermal' methods have been proposed for microbial reduction, such as the application of high pressure of up to 600 MPa, (Hendickx & Knorr 2002) or pulsed electric fields of order 10-100 kV/cm (Toepfl et al 2005); however, neither of these processes inactivates bacterial spores, so cannot produce a sterile product.

As discussed below, these processes have found some application within the food industry, albeit mainly in niche markets.

In addition, a number of innovations from outside the food industry, such as developments in packaging (Kerry et al 2006) and nanotechnology (Sanguansri & Augustin 2006), offer significant potential but also raise questions about public trust and acceptability (Siegrist et al 2007).

The authors believe that new technologies and process innovation are essential to deliver on identified consumer and market needs. The aim of this paper is to critically review the status of innovative processing technologies within the food industry and to highlight opportunities arising from their implementation. In addition this paper will also consider the barriers to commercialisation of new technologies in the food industry, as well as identifying how these might be overcome.

New processes: Product not process advantage

The genetically modified (GM) foods issue demonstrates the problems with the introduction of radically new technologies. To be acceptable to the consumer, the new process must deliver a product that shows significant advantage relative to a conventionally processed product. The enhancement of a product in this way may then outweigh any reservations or increase in cost. A case in point may be high pressure pasteurisation. In this process, a food is exposed to very high pressures for short times, during which a number of processes may take place including microbial inactivation. The process has been found suitable to prepare products which have very attractive features for consumers, for example:

* A guacamole which has the characteristics of freshly made avocado product with a refrigerated shelf-life of about a month with no microbial spoilage or browning. Alternative preservation processes, such as heat, destroy the delicate avocado flavour (Palou et al 2000)

* Freshly shucked raw oysters which have no food safety risk as potential harmful micro organisms and viruses are inactivated (Murchie et al 2007)

* Ready to eat (RTE) meat products with are more natural and better tasting (Crews 2006) with very good shelf-life and safety (Hayman et al 2004).

There are a series of requirements that are needed before a process can be introduced:

i) a product that meets the consumers needs as noted above

ii) enough information on how to safely produce the material to satisfy both regulators and the manufacturer; for example, either an efficient and validated mathematical model for the process or evidence of process safety through routes such as time-temperature indicators (such as Tucker et al 2002)

iii) a process which can be operated efficiently and cost effectively over commercial timescales to produce the product. This requires, for example, a trained workforce who can carry out a process which may involve skills which are not those of traditional food manufacturing.

An overview of a number of processes under consideration or in the early adoption phase in the food industry are discussed in the following section.

THE PROCESS INNOVATION PIPELINE IN THE FOOD INDUSTRY

There is a large portfolio of novel processes at various stages of implementation within the innovation funnel between lab scale and the factory. Table 1 lists several novel technologies with selected applications and stages of adoption. Where these technologies are along the path to commercialisation depends amongst several other factors on the state of the technology, the application, the company and the country.

Figure 1 portrays how a Technology Innovation Funnel usually works for a company, industry or technology. Ideas can, through a number of projects, by drawing on existing science and technology and newly developed science and technology platforms, move through the innovation funnel from the left to the right until they are commercialised and become an established technology. Often ideas are generated out of the academic literature, where new technologies can be explored and developed without the constraints of cost, upscale or consumer acceptability. Life cycles and Horizon 3, Horizon 2 and Horizon 1 developments are all important for the current and future profitability and value of a person (McKay 2006), company (Baghai et al 2000), and in our view, industry, country or any other economic entity. Another variant of the Innovation Funnel is given in Figure 2, with some selected new technologies and applications and the authors' estimate of their position in the funnel. The following technologies are considered in terms of their specific application and position within the innovation funnel.

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