Keeping Pace With Demand

In an ever-changing food and beverage marketplace, one constant reigns supreme: there is a consistent need for flexible designs and forward-thinking construction techniques to bring them to life.

As a strong U.S. economy pushes the growing demand for high-end foods, consumers are driving an all-natural product trend, and the industry is addressing the need for flexibility in plant design to cope with that, says Pablo Coronel, director of food processing for CRB, an engineering, architecture, construction and consulting firm headquartered in Kansas City, Mo.

“Everyone’s adapting to fewer additives and more natural ingredients,” he explains. “This affects the [facility and equipment] design because of the flexibility needed to produce many more products than before. Changeover becomes critical to the bottom line.” For instance, a ranch dressing facility may need to accommodate for the production of three separate product lines: one that is gluten free, another that is sugar free and an all-natural line, Coronel says. And those three lines require complete washing between each product to remove any traces of allergens or contaminants—with production runs becoming smaller as a result.

The need for smaller production runs requires the construction of smaller systems, perhaps segregating or separating the HVAC system—and that could add additional costs, says Larry Klein, CRB’s Midwest regional leader for the firm’s construction services group. And of course, all this work to retrofit plants creates downtime for manufacturers while the upgrades are being performed. “It can impact their ability to stock the product before they shut it down to ensure they meet client supply and demand,” Klein explains. “This calls for stringent schedules for contractors to perform quickly to shorten the shutdown.”

Contractors are employing a number of lean construction techniques to make these projects more efficient, less labor intensive and ultimately, safer. For example, last planner scheduling takes the planning out of the office and puts it into the hands of the people doing the work, Klein says, which increases the flow and shortens the time it takes to complete a project.

Another technique known as target-value design enables the contractor to control the budget throughout the life cycle of the project. This concept requires the whole team to own the budget; if something changes in scope, the team members identify any variance through the design and construction process to avoid negatively impacting the project budget, Klein says. “Contingency in the budget can pay for the extra cost, but at times, there is not enough contingency to cover the variance,” he adds. “Target-value design entails manipulating the budget and scope mid-project so that in the end you come out meeting the budget.”

CRB is providing food safety consulting for Glean, a newly launched producer of high-end, gluten-free flours and powders made from sweet potatoes, pumpkins and beets. While gluten contamination is the company’s main concern, cross contamination between the various ingredients should also be avoided, Coronel says. The plant has been retrofitted for allergen segregations: new ceilings, floors and walls were installed, and the process equipment, including valving and tubing, were modified to address contamination concerns. Everything must be segregated and washable.

New products are being developed every day in response to consumer demands. “Millennials have an incredible push toward (these) innovations and money to drive the market,” Coronel says. “Our role is to find ways to build a factory that is hygienic and provide flexibility for future growth.”

To do that, CRB’s design teams are involved in the process development of the product and use an interactive approach to scale up the clients’ processes while designing for growth and simultaneously planning for the potential for product demand decline. Essentially, the design must incorporate plans for how to reuse the equipment if the product isn’t a hit with consumers or if a line is added and a redesign is needed.

“We must respond not only to consumers’ demands but also to the retailers,” Klein says. “Walmart, for example, is reacting to its customers’ demands for sustainable packaging. Resealable pouches, fewer threads on bottle caps and other innovative designs are changing the expectations for how food and beverage companies package and produce their products, and that increases work for the food industry.”