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Cannabis Products Insider recently spoke to Hempak's Ryan Zvibleman about hemp as a packaging material, the company's patent-pending child-resistant jars, and the need for sustainable cannabis packaging.

Most manufacturing operations are constantly faced with change, and therefore they must be designed to adapt. Change routinely presents itself in the form of different production recipes, varying material properties, irregular equipment availability, weather extremes and many other factors. What’s more, change often includes several of these variables concurrently, and each may interact with others—adding still more complexity.

In celebration of International Women in Engineering Day, we had eight questions for Sufana Kreber, senior project engineering manager with Kerry North America.

Milchwerke Schwaben’s presence in the dairy industry starts as early as 1922, dairy farmers in Ulm, Germany joined together to form a cooperative that would make it possible to produce dairy products with greater efficiency. This merger resulted in a company whose products meet the needs of consumers throughout Germany and abroad.

Food waste is a big part of the conversation with consumers in 2023. Consumer research conducted by Do Good Foods in September 2022 reveals that “Americans want to be more climate-friendly, and nearly half are more concerned about food waste than they were a year ago.”

Italian-based Pasta Garofalo has introduced biaxially oriented polypropylene (BOPP) film material to its line of select pasta products. This new mono-film material is the product of advanced recycling via some form of pyrolysis—an anaerobic high-heat process that breaks down commingled plastics and produces oil and, eventually, a polymer resin for packaging film material or other uses.

In 2021, the American Pet Products Association reported that “pet parents” in the U.S. spent $50 million on pet food and treats. Not surprisingly, Frost and Sullivan predicts that the pet food industry will grow by 6.6% annually until 2026.

The FDA has released a summary of a new strategy aimed at reducing foodborne outbreaks and illness associated with the consumption of soft fresh queso fresco type cheeses.

A line not running at optimum efficiency and producing less than expected might only be second to unplanned downtime in terms of headaches faced in manufacturing—both of which can be caused by a weak link in the production line. We spoke to Craig Souser, president and CEO of JLS Automation, about overall equipment effectiveness (OEE), about maintenance best practices and strategies to use in order to keep a line operating at its fullest.

In a FOOD ENGINEERING interview, a PMMI VP said that three-quarters of food manufacturers were expected to spend money on new equipment from 2020-2025. PMMI’s Jorge Izquierdo, VP of market development at PMMI, said the driver behind the increase in processing and packaging purchases was “to leverage new technologies that offer increased flexibility.”