Food safety is a major challenge for industries, whose main concern is to protect consumers by guaranteeing quality products. For this, industries aim to develop preventive approaches for controlling food contamination during manufacturing. Indeed, to guarantee good hygiene, the actors of the food industry must apply the best techniques for cleaning and disinfection of premises and work equipment, to respect the storage temperature in order to avoid the proliferation of germs. In addition, it is necessary to carry out controls to ensure the safety and suitability of food. Indeed, all these measures are essential to ensure good food safety.

The production of food on the agricultural level requires a significant consumption of water, raw materials for the production of fertilizers and pesticides and energy for the heating of greenhouses and the cultivation of the land.

The different food production methods also lead, in many cases, to land erosion, deforestation, loss of biodiversity linked to large monoculture areas, overproduction of slurry which impacts the quality of groundwater and methane which contributes to climate change, and a significant decline in marine populations due to overfishing of certain species.

The transport of food is also responsible for a significant impact on the environment. Indeed, food must be transported from the place of production to the place of processing or packaging, then to the place of distribution and finally to the place of consumption. The impact of food transport is a function of distance, mode of transport and filling rate. The distribution of food products also involves energy consumption related to lighting, refrigeration and heating. The consumption of the product also has an impact on the environment, depending on the cooking method and time, the preservation of the food (refrigerator, freezer), food waste and the sorting of waste.

Food processing includes the steps of manufacturing and preparing food. Manufacturing consists of creating new foods by subjecting the raw material or raw product to processes that modify the physico-chemical characteristics of the food, for example the production of cheese from milk or bread from flour. On the other hand, during the preparation of a food (packaging, conditioning, conservation, etc.), the form of the raw material cannot be modified but can be contaminated by various chemical, physical or biological agents.

Today, in order to ensure food safety and protect the environment, agri-food specialists are inventing new techniques to minimize food processing, limit raw material deterioration factors and control chemical or enzymatic transformations during processing and storage. To have less waste, a healthier diet and above all to have zero waste, several techniques are proposed:

1- Minimize or exclude certain elements such as:

• Additives and preservatives,
• Additions of sugar and starch,
• Excess salt and flavor enhancers.

2- Minimizing the quantity of certain products, the least healthy and the most polluting (for example, having a single package of product instead of four but of the same quantity) is a technique for reducing waste.

3- Have fresh and seasonal raw foods without any processing step.

Improving the nutritional and organoleptic quality of food justifies the emergence of new technologies of different stages of food processing. For this, food processing companies must take many factors into account to be able to guarantee food safety to consumers.

Packaging means all the elements intended to contain and protect the product while ensuring its presentation, conservation and delivery from producer to consumer. The packaging system generally combines three types of packaging:

1- Sales packaging or primary packaging (I)

2- Grouped packaging or secondary packaging (II)

3- Transport packaging or tertiary packaging (III)

There are also two types of packaging depending on the final holder we distinguish:

– Household packaging: these are abandoned packaging after unpacking and consumption of the product.

– Industrial and commercial packaging: concerns all packaging that is not household (packaging related to industrial activities).

The main functions of the packaging are to contain and preserve the product, to provide general and legal information (expiry date, instructions for use, dosage, etc.), to ensure transport and storage, to facilitate use and product packaging, make the product visible and convey the values of the product and/or the company’s brand.

The design process

The design goes from the emergence of the idea to the detailed definition of the product or process including a preliminary design phase.

Facility design

Facility design is the general layout of facilities, including equipment, workstations, offices, fixed installations and machinery. It is an important part of business operations and facilities management.

The main objective is to contribute to the fluidity of processes, to optimize the use of space, to improve security, to facilitate communication between team members, to respond to the evolution of production, maintain employee morale and ensure flexibility for the future.

When you consider all of these factors from the beginning, you eliminate the risk of production difficulties and employee/customer complaints. You reduce costs, increase savings and ensure that your installation will be able to succeed for many years.

Process design

Process design is the direction and implementation of capital projects for businesses; design processes to meet project budgets and objectives.

Overseeing the continuous improvement efforts of companies is one of the main professional responsibilities. General duties may include reviewing and approving design orders, reviewing changes and drawing releases; collaborate with operations or process technology personnel on packaging design and specifications.

Others include: evaluating vendor bids, producing service and equipment bid requirements, generating sourcing recommendations, designing methods to reduce costs, implementing lean manufacturing practices and determining root causes of problems using statistical analyses.  

Product design

In the industrial world, product design consists of the invention, development and marketing on a market, of a new good or service, the time taken for this process being called “Time to market”.

The design of industrial products can be considered as a complex process, following many stages of work from the idea to the practical realization, through stages of creation, simulation, optimization and testing.

ISO 9000:2005 defines products design and development as a set of processes that transform requirements into specified characteristics or specification of a product, process or system.

In the food industry, unit operations aim to concentrate or separate the constituents of a mixture. These operations can be fluid transport, heat transfer or molecular mixture fractionation. They are classified into three major classes:

• Preparation, packaging and delivery of raw materials.
• Chemical transformation of reactants into products.
• Separation, purification and packaging of products.

The optimization of processes in industrial food engineering aims to develop or find products or services that allow, on the one hand, the improvement of industrial processes and, on the other hand, the rationalization of the environmental performance of the industry.

The transformation of agricultural products is any physical and/or chemical mechanical action that a biological organism of animal or vegetable origin undergoes to obtain a form other than that of origin and modify the taste quality or the shelf life of a food.

Several techniques are used to process and preserve food, such as the technique of heating, grinding, manufacturing, sterilization, packaging, conditioning and preservation.

The raw material is naturally very variable, changes in the event of unfavorable conditions in the production chain and therefore becomes unsuitable for consumption. For this, the food industry must market products with constant characteristics in order to protect the consumer and the environment. In general, food processing has little effect on the environment, but with the emergence of new industrial technologies and the use of chemicals, the rate of waste increases more and more because today everything is artificial, modified and disposable.

Every year, tons of industrial waste end up in nature and contributes to environmental pollution, which pushes industries to improve storage conditions to reduce losses and waste, to avoid over-packaged products, to create reusable products that replace disposable ones, to exclude certain chemicals that are less necessary such as additives and preservatives and to have fresh and seasonal raw foods without any processing steps.