One of the best supply chain efficiency tips we can offer food processing and production facilities is to reduce food waste. By decreasing food loss, you instantly gain more usable inventory and maximize your storage investments. Every business needs strategies for how to reduce waste in the supply chain. In the food industry, those methods look a little different. Food production is highly regulated, and it’s too common for products to become contaminated, spoiled or otherwise unfit for sale.
We’ve put together this guide to help your business improve production efficiency and maintain high health and sanitation standards.
Jump to Sections:
- The Issue With Food Production Waste
- 7 Ways to Reduce Food Waste in the Supply Chain
- Equipment to Help Reduce Food Production Waste
- Benefits of Reducing the Rate of Food Production Loss
- How Cherry’s Material Handling Can Help
The Issue With Food Production Waste
North America loses or wastes 168 metric tons of food each year. In the United States, food processing and distribution steps in the supply chain account for 24 million metric tons of that food loss and waste. According to recent data from the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) of the United Nations, 40% of North America’s food waste happens before reaching consumers.
Some of that waste involves grocers and suppliers rejecting misshapen or ugly-looking produce. A lot of it occurs because of mishaps in the production and distribution process. Malfunctioning refrigerators, improper handling, uncleanliness or a break in the cold chain can cause spoilage. Even something as simple as confusion over expiration date labeling can cause food to go bad or perfectly safe food to get tossed. According to a recent study, 10.9% of food waste in manufacturing stems from human error, which is the second-largest single cause after product changes.
Just as with any industry’s supply chain, food waste is inventory shrinkage. It’s bad for your bottom line. All the energy costs for refrigerating and transporting perishable goods go to waste if the food spoils before it’s sold. Farms and producers lose $15 billion to food waste annually, and manufacturers another $2 billion.
Besides the financial impact, food waste is also taking a toll on the environment. Wasted food takes up 21% of landfill space. It consumes 19% of fertilizer and 18% of cropland, which hurts the environment and costs farmers money. Sustainability is a strategic advantage in a world of increasing regulations and eco-conscious consumers. And, as global food insecurity increases, food waste is bad for public relations.
7 Ways to Reduce Food Waste in the Supply Chain
You know food waste is raising your expenses and hindering your growth. How can you solve the problem and gain the strategic advantages that come with it? Follow these tips for how to decrease food waste in your supply chain:
1. Understand Your Food Loss Causes
Food loss and waste is a complicated problem for food handling and storage facilities because many causes come into play. One thing that can help is increasing visibility over your supply chain. Knowing just how much food is lost or wasted is the first step to reducing that amount.
Increased supply chain visibility also lets you discover what causes food loss in your facility. Maybe the ingredients from one supplier expire sooner than supplies from another vendor. Knowing that information helps you find the root cause and resolve the problem through supply chain management. Maybe the supplier has frequent shipping delays, or their processing facility has a sanitation concern.
Food loss has many causes at various stages of the supply chain, including:
- Overproduction.
- Ineffective storage methods or infrastructure.
- Poor timing at harvest.
- Spillage.
- Degradation.
- Errors during processing, such as incorrect shape, size or weight.
- Packaging damage.
- Contamination.
- Technical malfunctions.
2. Use Smart Cold Chain Transport Containers and Trucks
Transporting goods from farm to storage to retailers is a highly sensitive process. During transit, perishables must stay at a food-safe temperature, whether it’s light refrigeration or a deep freeze. If a refrigerated truck or container warms above this set temperature, the food may become unsafe to eat and illegal to sell.One solution is to introduce smart sensors and devices into cold chain transportation. Intelligent devices can monitor location, temperature, gas composition and more. These sensors let supply chain managers monitor their goods while in transport. If the temperature or humidity level approaches an unsafe threshold, the manager can intervene and adjust the settings, no matter where in the world the goods are.
3. Implement Better Food Packaging
Packaging breakage represents a significant cause of food loss. Investing in a thicker or break- and tamper-resistant packaging material can prevent food from becoming contaminated.
The way food gets packaged can also extend its shelf life. For example, vacuum-packed food products are sealed away from detectable microbes like bacteria. Wrapping produce like cucumbers can prevent moisture loss, extending its shelf life. Better, safer packaging designs and materials exist for many food categories, letting you prolong your products’ shelf life.
4. Manage Shelf Life Alongside Lead Times
The industry standard for food inventory management is the First Expiration, First Out (FEFO) method. As a warehouse in the middle of the supply chain, you must manage FEFO on both ends — from your supplier lead times to your own delivery schedules.A product’s shelf life and your ability to sell it will affect when and how much to order from your suppliers. If your supplier has a long lead time, you must sell the product quickly and within a close range of your facility to prevent expiration. Suppose another supplier offers a quick lead time. In that case, you can increase your shipments and order in lower quantities to stop products from expiring while in your possession.On the distribution side, you also need to manage expiration dates with your own lead times. Delivering products in a closer range to your facility is one strategy to try. If you deliver all over the country or in a large service area, consider increasing your number of storage and decision hubs. When products have more stops, you can more effectively redirect goods to different locations following the FEFO method. For example, say your products experience an unexpected delay along a shipping route. When they arrive at your decision hub, you can send them to a closer customer. That way, they’ll get in a customer’s hands before they expire.
5. Train Employees in Proper Handling Techniques
Improper food handling is a significant cause of food waste, especially when dealing with raw food products like meat and poultry. Your staff can go a long way toward reducing your warehouse’s raw material waste.
They should understand and practice your facility’s food handling and safety procedures to prevent contamination, spillage and other mishaps. By training your staff in the best safety practices, you prevent food contamination resulting from injuries. Your team should also know and follow your industry’s sanitation requirements. Empower your workforce to recognize and report potential problems, whether it’s co-workers tampering with products or signs of a pest infestation.
6. Prevent and Control Pests at the Warehouse
Processing, storing and shipping edible goods will likely attract some hungry visitors. Warehouses can be particularly susceptible to pests because they have many entry points through their industrial loading docks and doors that stay open for ventilation throughout the workday. Unwanted guests may even hitch a ride on your delivery trucks.
Pests are always a workplace safety concern, and they can be an exceptionally costly problem for food and raw material industries. Anything from insects to rodents to birds can make their way into your warehouse and feast on your unsold products.
The best pest management strategy for food processing and storage is prevention. The design of the facility itself can go a long way in deterring pests from the outside. For example, surround the building with gravel rather than flowering plants and use solid pour concrete rather than hollow concrete walls. Anything from your lighting to your sanitation techniques can deter pests. Make sure your team cleans up food spills immediately and regularly deep-cleans your facility.
Besides all the preventive measures, it’s also crucial to monitor your facility for pests. One way to do this is with monitored rodent traps. When a rodent is discovered, immediately begin examining the facility for signs of more. It’s also smart to inspect inbound and outbound delivery trucks for pests.
7. Improve Sanitation
Contamination is a huge concern in food processing. As a result, organizations like the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) set high sanitation standards. If contamination is a concern at your facility, thoroughly clean and decontaminate the equipment. Improving sanitation involves using equipment that is easy to clean, like stainless steel and plastic, and employing proper cleaning methods. Cleaning staff must use the right amount of cleaning solution and water and allow enough time for disinfectants to kill bacteria.
Equipment to Help Reduce Food Production Waste
Keeping warehouse and processing equipment up to date is critical for preventing food spoilage. The right equipment improves cleanliness and productivity, allowing you to manage your materials better to prevent inventory shrinkage. If your food takes longer to process because of inefficient equipment, it gets closer to expiration and shrinks your resale window. Some equipment to consider for your facility includes:
1. Plastic Pallets
Nonporous plastic pallets for the food industry are more hygienic than disposable wooden pallets. They resist insects and rodents and are easy to clean with chemicals or steam sterilizers. In specific sectors, like meatpacking, plastic pallets are a regulatory requirement. Many plastic pallets have USDA- and FDA-compliant materials. They come in various shapes and types to meet any industry’s needs.
For example, smooth top plastic pallets are even easier to clean because they don’t have any channels or crevices where grime, food products or bacteria can build up.
2. Agricultural or Meat Containers
Just as with plastic pallets, plastic industrial storage containers are also easy to clean and are FDA or USDA approved. Agricultural storage containers come in vented and solid wall designs. They make the perfect storage solution for harvested produce across many niche sectors. Meat storage containers come in many colors for effective color-coded organization and have either single- or double-wall constructions.
3. Stainless Steel Lift Tables
Sanitary, corrosion-resistant stainless steel lift tables benefit your facility in both hygiene and efficiency. Because the material resists scratches, rust and chemical corrosion, it remains easy to clean and antimicrobial. It will also hold up to the many knives and sharp tools used at your facility.Lift tables also provide an ergonomic benefit, replacing the need for heavy manual lifting. They create an ergonomically correct workspace for employees, no matter their height. The stainless steel tables offer a hygienic surface for sorting and performing other manual food handling functions.
4. Pallet Washers
Easy-to-clean pallets provide a huge productivity boost to your facility’s sanitation. Still, manual cleaning processes don’t hold a candle to industrial plastic pallet washers, which clean up to 200 pallets an hour. They’ll remove anything from blood, grease and oil to allergens and bacteria. They are also very effective for cleaning aluminum pallets as well.
An automatic pallet washer cleans pallets thoroughly in a fraction of the time of manual scrubbing and disinfecting. They improve sanitation and efficiency simultaneously, making them a powerful tool to reduce food production loss at your facility.
5. Freezer Spacers
For facilities that freeze their goods, plastic or aluminum freezer spacers dramatically improve operations. By spacing stacked products and providing vented construction, spacers increase cold airflow to all stored products and reduce freezing times. Since freezing is a fantastic way to prevent spoilage, freezer spacers can improve your facility’s productivity and reduce food waste. As with other food-safe material handling equipment, they’re easy to clean. Many designs comply with FDA standards.
Benefits of Reducing the Rate of Food Production Loss
Once you discover how to decrease the rates of food waste at your facility and throughout your distribution network, you’ll gain some surprising advantages for your business. By implementing smart waste reduction strategies, you will:
1. Reduce Your Production Costs and Increase Profits
The top business benefit of reducing food waste is you’ll invest less money in inventory that will become unsellable in your possession. Considering how much food loss and waste costs your supply chain, you stand to lower your production costs significantly. Selling more of the food products you invest in also increases profits.
2. Grow Your Business Without Adding New Infrastructure
When your product’s market demand increases, you might consider whether it’s time to add a new processing plant or warehouse. Will the extra space and equipment be worth the higher overhead costs? One way to increase your output and meet demands is to reduce food loss. This makes your supply chain more productive, so you can put off a facility expansion and still continue growing.
3. Meet Your Company’s Sustainability Goals
Food waste places a surprisingly high burden on the environment. Excess croplands that grow wasted food contribute to habitat loss. Excess fertilizers pollute the environment and emit harmful greenhouse gases. In food processing and warehousing, energy gets wasted by transporting, storing and refrigerating goods that never get sold.Meanwhile, consumers have a growing concern for the environment. They want to do business with companies that share their sustainability commitments. Many companies are committing to aggressive sustainability goals to meet consumer demand and improve public relations. Reducing food waste is a fantastic way to make your sustainability initiatives a reality.
4. Find New Markets
As consumers become more concerned with food waste, the market for so-called “ugly” produce is emerging. Many consumers are happy to pay a slightly discounted price for perfectly nutritious food that doesn’t meet retailers’ aesthetic standards. Rebrand your produce that generally wouldn’t make the cut or sell it to retailers who have already established such a market.
Another avenue to reduce food waste and open up a new market is to divert foods to other uses. Sell your unattractive produce or meat that was cut to the wrong shape to make baby food. Market misshapen tomatoes as ingredients for ketchup or tomato sauce production. Sweep up seeds, corn or grain that falls on the floor during production to be sold for animal feed.
By reducing your production costs, you can also sell your products at a lower price, which opens the door to new markets. If you lead your market in food waste reduction, you can undercut your competition in pricing to increase your customer base.
How Cherry’s Material Handling Can Help
Cherry’s Material Handling offers many solutions to improve safety and cleanliness at your food processing or production facility. Many of our offerings have FDA and USDA approvals. We stock plastic pallets, agricultural and meat containers, lift tables, freezer spacers and other food safety material handling products. As an e-commerce store, we make your job easier with competitive pricing, low minimum order quantities and product customization.
If you ever have questions about our food-safe material handling products, call us at 877-350-2729 or reach out to us online to chat with a product specialist.