Columbus UK Blog

How to turn your food manufacturing waste into an advantage

Written by Simon Noakes | Sep 3, 2019

Are you making the most of your food manufacturing waste? We know that this sounds strange but according to a recent article by FoodDive, the upcycled food waste market has grown to nearly $47 billion, and is expected to rise by 5% over the next ten years. 

Could your food business benefit?

FoodDive acknowledges that beverage and bakery industries are the most lucrative emerging markets regarding food waste and also that many consumers are purchasing “ugly” or “imperfect” products now that they're sold in some supermarkets.

But it isn't just about these 'ugly' or imperfect produce. Consider peels as an example - they can easily be turned into a jelly. Or even past prime fruits and veggies; they can now be re-purposed into other consumable products.

This essentially will allow food manufacturers and processors to convert food waste from a loss to a profit. 

Opening additional revenue streams

Co-products are valuable secondary goods generated during manufacturing that can provide additional profit streams, and by-products are those that are residual or incidental to the production process, which can be recycled back into production, sold, or used for something else, as additional profit streams or cost reductions in the manufacturing process.

All of this sounds great, right? But how do you manage the process? You need to check out Aptean Food and Beverage ERP.

What can help you get there?

Aptean Food and Beverage ERP was built with food manufacturers in mind. The co-product and by-product solution, allows users to plan, schedule and record the consumption and output of these processes. 

By using this solution to define processes, the user can create co- and by-product formulas based on any batch size and automatically resize the formula for batch(es) based on demand and equipment.

Specifically, co-product and by-product allows you to define diverging Bill of Materials (BOMs) in which one item goes into a “product” and additional item/s result in co- or by-products. Therefore, giving a company the ability to use technology to track, monitor, reuse, and sell (if desired) co- and by-products of your manufacturing process.

Otherwise, it’ll just go to waste, and add to the large amount of food produced for humans that’s wasted annually, which is about 30%.