Food industry

Question

This piglix contains articles or sub-piglix about Food industry

Answer 1

Russky Produkt OAO

Russky Produkt OAO is the leading domestic producer of groceries among the enterprises of the Russian food industry. Under the trade mark Russky Produkt production capacities of the following enterprises were brought together: the Moscow experimental combine of food concentrates "Coloss", the macaroni factory "Supermak" and the Detchinskiy plant, of vegetable concentrates.

The company works in the majority of grocery market segments. About 80% of the turnover of the Joint Stock Company Russky Produkt is broken up into 4 commodity groups: the dehydrogenated soups, potato chips, coffee, and tea.

Today Russky Produkt is a contemporary and highly technological enterprise, with a developed infrastructure of production and a production line, which includes a significant portfolio of brands. Such brands include: the potato chips Moscovskiy Kartofel, the Bodrost tea brand, the groceries brand Russkiy Product + the soups brand Dachniy, the pasta division Supermak, and the oat flakes Hercules; which have obtained truly national acknowledgement.

The company has branch offices in the cities of St. Petersburg, Samara, Novosibirsk, Khabarovsk, Nizhniy Novgorod, Rostov-on- Don, and Yekaterinburg. The company's products are sold in stores from Vladivostok to Brest and the number of regular personnel of the company exceeds 2000 people.

The company was founded in 1996 as the one of largest and most contemporary of the time, in the field of foodstuffs manufacturing. Between 1996-97 under a steady process of restructuring and unification, the joint stock company Russian Product, came into being.

The company operates in most segments, producing dehydrated soups, potato chips, cereal, noodles, coffee, tea, instant chicory, coffee beverages, dehydrated jelly, spices and seasonings, semi-finished products for the preparation of pastries.

Russky Produkt's largest international competitors are Nestle, Kraft Foods, Unilever and Mars Incorporated. International Competitors comprise approximately 65% of the Russian Market.

The company faced financial problems in early 2014, so it plans to improve business efficiency via enhancement of production capacity, introduction of state-of-the art equipment and product portfolio optimisation. Russky Produkt OAO is likely to introduce new products within sweet and savory segment and to restyle its grocery range. The company intends to strengthen its position in the regions through expansion and increasing its distribution network.

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Answer 2

The Revolution Will Not Be Microwaved

The Revolution Will Not Be Microwaved: Inside America's Underground Food Movements

The Revolution Will Not Be Microwaved: Inside America's Underground Food Movements is a 2003 book by food activist Sandor Katz that examines how contemporary food production differs drastically from our recent past. The author challenges the corporate food industry as well as the way we think about food. He suggests how traditional cultural practices of sustainable agriculture might subvert the corporate farm system.

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Answer 3

Retail concentration

Retail concentration refers to the market-share generally belonging to the top 4 or 5 mass distribution firms present in a regional market, as a percentage of the total.

Retail concentration is not simply a concentration ratio as is emerging in the food sector. This is due to two factors: the particular relevance retail is gaining on a global scale, and the particular shape of the food supply chain.

In recent years, Retail Concentration moved ahead with fusions and acquisitions along the entire food supply chain. We can assume with Grievink (2003) that in a few years there will be only 5 dominant actors in the globalised food chain. The same researcher states that in the 90's the top-5 food manufacturers could count on twice the cash flow of the top-5 retailers. Nowadays the relation is inverted: the top 5 retailers can count on twice that of the top-5 manufacturers.

Thus, the food chain has become increasingly vertically integrated, with global corporations able to coordinate inputs from the seed to the field, from the stable to the table. Retail concentration by one hand is the answer that retail is giving to compete with the giants of agrofood industry. By the other hand, is the agrofood industry in itself searching to arrive directly to the consumers, through a refined relations system. In this process, private labels are increasingly attracting consumers, and are expected to grow more and more on their fidelisation strategy, beating on quality, safety and also ethical values.

Recently the European Commission proposed solutions to face with overall price increase about foodstuff. Among the measures proposed, several relate to the retail power recently acquired.

In particular, the payments delay to the producers; the additional fees asked to the producers to place on the shelves branded products; price transparency; better regulation on promotional activities and openings/closing time are all issues on the agenda.

For supporters, retail concentration means more chances for consumers, lower prices, better quality. For opponents, by the contrary, the disappearing of traditional shops, of food culture, of neighborhood life in general. Furthermore, too much concentration means squeezing the price of industry and of agriculture, which can lead to outsourcing food from anywhere it can cost less, without a truly long term impact assessment.

Tim Lang (Food Wars, Earthscan London 2004) described the retail concentration phenomenon such as a "food war", in which winners and losers take place. Tim Lang talks about "food clusters" ([p. 84]) to better handle the idea of concentration along the entire food chain. There are a lot of legal instruments which allow to get more and more concentrated. Acquisition being the first one, follow mergers, joint ventures, partnerships and more not formalised contracts/ agreements. Note that the "hypermarketization" is not limited to the Western World, but supermarkets rise fast also in the less developed countries and in the East and in the South of the World. . Regarding that, there are a lot of concerns, pretending that the overwhelming power of retailing is making poorer and poorer farmers, in particular in the LDC (Less Developed Countries). The "crowding out" effect on local agricultures it is basically due to the global sourcing of the produces, wherever they cost less and offer more. To say it with the words of the Italian food-thinker Corrado Finardi to fairly function, the agricultural system has a different, slower timeline than the market (in agriculture counts the long term investment, while on the global market it is more important the precise moment in which supply and demand match).

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Answer 4

Serving suggestion

Serving suggestion is a disclaimer used on food packaging. The phrase is used as legal fine print with a picture of the product. The picture attempts to portray the manufacturer's food in the most favorable or appetizing way possible, sometimes including other foods that the package does not contain. For example, the labeling on a box of cereal may feature a picture of a cereal bowl filled with that cereal, milk and a fruit garnish, or a jar of mustard may picture a hot dog in a bun with mustard on it. The serving suggestion may portray the serving size of the food used, but just as often a much larger serving is shown as part of the marketing of the item. As a disclaimer a serving suggestion also serves to remove any legal obligation on the part of the manufacturer to provide the other items pictured with their product. In Ireland this is an illegal practice.

When used with a cooking recipe, it is a recommendation from the author as a way to serve the dish.

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Answer 5

Spray drying

Spray drying is a method of producing a dry powder from a liquid or slurry by rapidly drying with a hot gas. This is the preferred method of drying of many thermally-sensitive materials such as foods and pharmaceuticals. A consistent particle size distribution is a reason for spray drying some industrial products such as catalysts. Air is the heated drying medium; however, if the liquid is a flammable solvent such as ethanol or the product is oxygen-sensitive then nitrogen is used.

All spray dryers use some type of atomizer or spray nozzle to disperse the liquid or slurry into a controlled drop size spray. The most common of these are rotary disk and single-fluid high pressure swirl nozzles. Atomizer wheels are known to provide broader particle size distribution, but both methods allow for consistent distribution of particle size. Alternatively, for some applications two-fluid or ultrasonic nozzles are used. Depending on the process needs, drop sizes from 10 to 500 µm can be achieved with the appropriate choices. The most common applications are in the 100 to 200 µm diameter range. The dry powder is often free-flowing.

The most common type of spray dryers are called single effect. There is a single source of drying air at the top of the chamber (see n°4 on the diagram). In most cases the air is blown in the same direction as the sprayed liquid (co-current). A fine powder is produced, but it can have poor flow and produce a lot of dust. To overcome the dust and poor flow of the powder, a new generation of spray dryers called multiple effect spray dryers have been produced. Instead of drying the liquid in one stage, drying is done through two steps: the first at the top (as per single effect) and the second with an integrated static bed at the bottom of the chamber. The bed provides a humid environment which causes smaller particles to clump, producing more uniform particle sizes, usually within the range of 100 to 300 µm. These powders are free-flowing due to the larger particle size.

The fine powders generated by the first stage drying can be recycled in continuous flow either at the top of the chamber (around the sprayed liquid) or at the bottom, inside the integrated fluidized bed. The drying of the powder can be finalized on an external vibrating fluidized bed.

The hot drying gas can be passed in as a co-current, same direction as sprayed liquid atomizer, or counter-current, where the hot air flows against the flow from the atomizer. With co-current flow, particles spend less time in the system and the particle separator (typically a cyclone device). With counter-current flow, particles spend more time in the system and is usually paired with a fluidized bed system. Co-current flow generally allows the system to operate more efficiently.

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Answer 6

Standard components (food processing)

Standard components is a food technology term, when manufacturers buy in a standard component they would use a pre-made product in the production of their food. They help products to be the same in consistency, they are quick and easy to use in batch production of food products. Some examples are pre-made cubes, marzipan, icing, ready made pastry.

Manufacturers use standard components as they save time and sometimes cost a lot less and it also helps with consistency in products. If a manufacturer is to use a standard component from another supplier it is essential that a precise and accurate specification is produced by the manufacturer so that the component meets the standards set by the manufacturer.

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Answer 7

Starch mogul system

The starch mogul system is a method of molding candy that allows runnier materials to be used than normal processes. It is used in the manufacture of jelly beans and gummy bears, and was formerly used in the manufacture of marshmallows before the advent of the extrusion process. The starch mogul system uses a machine with trays of starch. Each tray has a mold firmly pushed down in it to create cavities in the starch. The cavities are then filled with the candy material, and allowed to cool or harden as necessary. During this time, the starch helps absorb excess water, making the candy moldings handleable. Finally, the trays are dumped and the candy is separated from the starch, which is then reused by the machine.

Hans Arthur Faerber, founder of NID Pty Ltd, created the current form of the starch mogul system in 1952.

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Answer 8

Stuffed and Starved

Stuffed and Starved: The Hidden Battle for the World Food System is a non-fiction book written by Raj Patel. It was published in 2008 by Melville House Publishing. Stuffed and Starved looks at the inequities of the world food system from the beginning to the end of the conventional food chain, from producers to manufacturers and distributors to consumers.

According to Naomi Klein, Stuffed and Starved is "One of the most dazzling books I have read in a very long time. The product of a brilliant mind, and a gift to a world hungering for justice."

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Answer 9

Sugar cane mill

A sugar cane mill can refer to a factory that processes sugar cane to produce raw or white sugar. It can also mean the piece of equipment that crushes the sticks of sugar cane to extract the juice.

There are a number of steps in producing raw sugar from cane:

These processing steps will produce a brown or raw sugar. Mill white sugar also known as plantation white sugar can be produced by introducing some form of colour removal process (often sulphitation) between the juice clarification and the juice evaporation stages mentioned above. The raw sugar produced is often refined to produce white sugar. This sugar refining can be done either at a completely separate factory or at a back-end refinery which is attached to the raw sugar factory.

There are two processes for extracting juice from cane:

Juice extraction by milling is the process of squeezing the juice from the cane under a set mills using high pressure between heavy iron rollers. Those mills can have from 3 up to 6 rolls; every set of mills are called tandem mill or mill train. For improve the milling extraction efficiency, imbibition water is added at each mill: Hot water is poured over the cane just before it enters the last mill in the milling train and is recirculated up to the reach the first mill. The juice squeezed from this cane is low in sugar concentration and is pumped to the preceding mill and poured onto the cane just before it enters the rollers, the juice from this mill is the same way pumped back up the milling train. Mixed juice (that is to say cane juice mixed with the water introduced at the last mill) is withdrawn from the first and second mills and is sent for further processing. Milling trains typically have four, five or six mills in the tandem. For improve the milling extraction performance before the cane reach the first mill, normally are used knife and shredder as preparation equipments.

Sugarcane diffusion is the process of extracting the sucrose from the cane with the use of imbibtion but without the squeezing by mills. Shredded cane is introduced into the diffuser at the feed end, Hot water is poured over the shredded cane just before the discharge end of the diffuser. The hot water percolates through the bed of cane and removes sucrose from the cane. This dilute juice is then collected in a compartment under the bed of cane and is pumped to a point a little closer to the feed end of the diffuser and this dilute juice is allowed to percolate through the bed of cane. At this point the concentration of sucrose in the cane is higher than the concentration of sucrose in the dilute juice just mentioned and so sucrose diffuses from the cane to the juice, this now slightly richer juice is pumped back up the diffuser and the process is repeated, typically, 12 to 15 times (compared with the four to six times for the milling process)

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Answer 10

Sugar refinery

A sugar refinery is a refinery which processes raw sugar into white refined sugar or that processes sugar beet to refined sugar.

Many cane sugar mills produce raw sugar, which is sugar that still contains molasses, giving it more colour (and impurities) than the white sugar which is normally consumed in households and used as an ingredient in soft drinks and foods. While cane sugar does not need refining to be palatable, sugar from sugar beet is almost always refined to remove the strong, almost always unwanted, taste of beets from it. The refined sugar produced is more than 99 percent pure sucrose.

Whereas many sugar mills only operate during a limited time of the year during the cane harvesting period, many cane sugar refineries work the whole year round. Sugar beet refineries tend to have shorter periods when they process beet but may store intermediate product and process that in the off-season.

Raw sugar is either processed into white refined sugar in local refineries, and sold to the local industry and consumers, or it is exported and refined in the country of destination. Sugar refineries are often located in heavy sugar-consuming regions such as North America, Europe, and Japan. Since the 1990s many state-of-the art sugar refineries have been built in the Middle East and North Africa region, e.g. in Dubai, Saudi Arabia and Algeria. The world´s largest sugar refinery company is American Sugar Refining with facilities in North America and Europe.

The raw sugar is stored in large warehouses and then transported into the sugar refinery by means of transport belts. In the traditional refining process, the raw sugar is first mixed with heavy syrup and centrifuged to wash away the outer coating of the raw sugar crystals, which is less pure than the crystal interior. Many sugar refineries today buy high pol sugar and can do without the affination process.

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