In Europe, about 88 million tonnes of food are wasted each year, which entails costs, according to the European Union, of 143,000 million euros. Bernhard Url, executive director of the European Food Safety Authority, points out that “ Europe wastes 30% of food, which is an ethical scandal ”. Although European regulations on food and packaging safety are one of the strictest in the world, this is only part of the solution. From the producers who manufacture and process food to the vendors who make it available for purchase, there are many organizations in the food chain that are turning to technology, and specifically artificial intelligence (AI) to avoid and reduce food waste. waste of food.
DVNutrition is a Dutch company, producer of whey protein, which is revolutionizing its production processes thanks to artificial intelligence. This manufacturer, which produces more than 10,000 tons of whey protein a year, has to make sure that it can make fully informed decisions throughout the process so that nothing it produces is spoiled. By combining the experience of its operators with data-driven information and predictive analytics, this company is able to slow down and even stop production when the storage tank is full. This means that the manufacturing process is directly aligned with your storage capacity, mitigating the risk of overproduction and minimizing waste.
What’s more, by applying new algorithms and analyzing data, both new and historical, DVNutrition hopes to improve the quality of its whey proteins and derivatives. “ Whey is a natural product and the seasons influence its composition. To guarantee quality, we have to anticipate seasonality in our process. Using up-to-date data such as temperature, we can make proactive adjustments in real time , ”says Marcel Boon, CEO of the Dutch company.
If modifying industrial procedures and training operators helps address some aspects of food waste, what else can manufacturers do to ensure that food remains in good condition long after it leaves the production floor and arrives to people’s pantries? The quality and appearance of the packaging, wrinkles, nicks or cracks, is one of the main causes of food waste. Tetra Pak, a food processing and packaging solutions company present in more than 175 countries, is developing systems that work with AI, one of which takes pictures of each of the packages leaving the production line and carries out an analysis to reduce failures.
Traditional quality control methods require operators to test a small number of packages. Tetra Pak’s proof of concept analyzes the image of each package using a system that contains a deep neural network model capable of identifying whether or not a package has problems. Thanks to AI, Tetra Pak can better understand its customers’ production problems and make recommendations, relate errors to process adjustments, and address relevant underlying causes. “ One machine,” says Johan Nilsson, Tetra Pak’s vice president of digital and industrial solutions 4.0, “makes about seven packages per second, making individual manual inspection of each package impractical . With this technology, both Tetra Pak and its customers can guarantee the quality and appearance required of our packaging . “
Now it only remains, in addition to more producers continuing to transform their processes, with or without artificial intelligence to be more efficient and not waste food, that people do the same. With or without AI, we have to be aware that what we throw away, what we do not consume, what we produce in excess, is food that other people cannot and will not consume, and that also disrupts the environment and the natural ecosystem. Let’s be aware, yes, that technology can help, but who else can do it is ourselves.
