Reducing wastage and overcoming inefficiency
The UK’s food and drink industry is the country’s largest manufacturing sector by turnover, surpassing the automotive and aerospace industries combined. However, around 40% of the food is imported from other countries (gov.uk). The UK relies on specific countries for key products such as Spain for citrus fruits, the Netherlands for tomatoes, and India and Pakistan for rice (HMRC Trade Data).
There are several reasons why the UK needs to import food from other countries, including climate constraints and seasonal variability. The UK lacks the climate conditions necessary for producing certain fruits, vegetables and crops. There is also a short window of opportunity for crops like tomatoes, lettuce and berries. Importing food helps meet national demand and ensures the UK’s food security and resilience.
With challenges fuelled by Brexit, international conflicts, and fluctuating currency values, the trading market won’t always be stable and secure. It’s not always beneficial for the UK to import nearly half of its food from other countries. Strong national production can help mitigate international supply risks.
However, much more needs to be done for the food and drink sector to achieve strong profitable and sustainable production and to thereby reduce UK reliance on imported foods.
Food manufacturers typically tolerate about five percent of waste within their food processes under normal production conditions. However, with over 55 years’ experience visiting different food and drink factories, we have observed that the actual wastage in most factories is significantly higher than five percent.
The main reasons for wastage include wasted raw materials, inefficient production processes, and product recalls. It’s crucial to understand the root causes of the wastage and find better and more long-term solutions rather than quick fixes which are often depressingly only short-term.
Wasted Raw Materials
For example, during a visit to a vegetable packing plant, we observed an assembly line where various machines were processing spinach. Spinach frequently flew off the line and dropped onto the floor. Rather than stopping the entire system to fix the problem, the operators chose to clean the floor at the end of the day, discarding all the fallen spinach. This approach was considered more ‘efficient’ than stopping production for a few minutes to improve the process. However, this practice results in significant wastage of raw materials for the sake of speed.
Inefficient Whisky Bottling
Inefficiency in the production line can create a lot of wastage in the bottling industry. We visited a whisky distillery a few years ago. The production line had a capacity of running 500 bottles per minute. However, it was only producing 250 bottles per minute. Operating below full capacity wasted many resources. One of the root causes was the screw capping machine. Some caps were screwed too tightly, stripping the thread and breaking the seals, while others weren’t screwed down far enough, resulting in leakers. This situation caused a lot of downtime and slowed production efficiency. Considerable time and labour were wasted reworking the bottles.
Contaminated Product Recalls
In addition, there is always wastage associated with product recalls. Recently, food manufacturers recalled at least 60 types of pre-packed sandwiches, wraps, and salads sold in major supermarkets due to potential E. coli contamination. This could have been avoided with proper quality checks and laboratory tests during the manufacturing process, ensuring 100% food quality and safety. The recalls resulted in significant wastage. What’s worse, approximately 211 people across the UK were affected by E. coli, with at least 67 requiring hospitalisation. Consumer protection from health and safety must be the number one priority at this time, with product quality and appearance being in a vitally important second place.
Other forms of wastage in factories are not always visible to the team. Some factories have become used to the wastage and inefficiency, thus becoming blind to it. While breakdowns and root causes are often easy to identify, short stops and slow running can be much more difficult. This is where our specialist knowledge and experience can be particularly helpful.
A Fresh Perspective
Often, all your business needs is a fresh pair of eyes to look into the details of your production processes and uncover performance improvement opportunities. We have enormous experience helping manufacturers discover the root causes of downtime, ensuring product quality consistency, reducing wastage and improving overall performance.
If the UK food industry wants to move away from over-reliance on importing food, manufacturers need to focus on improving their internal manufacturing performance to build more robust production systems, where long-term fixes are identified and implemented once and for all, and quick fixes become a thing of the past. This sustainable approach ensures more ‘right first time’, lower overheads, less wastage and greater efficiency. Better still, finished goods go out and stay out as factory returns become distant memories.
If you’re ready to ensure product quality, reduce wastage and enhance efficiency, please reach out to us at info@harfordcontrol.com or call us at +44 (0)1225 764461.
*Harford Control announced a solution range update earlier this year and we will showcase our latest end-to-end MIS/MES system on Stand B46 at PPMA.
