What happened
The company previously outsourced HPP but now controls the processing stage internally. The company says this enables a raw-material-to-dispatch cycle of about 24 hours. HPP applies high pressure to sealed products and requires product-specific validation.
Why it matters to food manufacturing engineers
In-house HPP changes the factory bottleneck, maintenance risk and production scheduling. The engineering business case must include high-pressure safety, water services, process validation and specialist support.
Operational impact
This introduces a critical asset and potentially a single point of failure. Maintenance strategy, spare-parts arrangements and fallback processing should be defined before capacity is fully dependent on the installation.
AFME perspective — what to watch
AFME interpretation: vertical integration can improve process control but increases ownership of specialist equipment and its lifecycle risk.
The company previously outsourced HPP but now controls the processing stage internally. The company says this enables a raw-material-to-dispatch cycle of about 24 hours. HPP applies high pressure to sealed products and requires product-specific validation.
In-house HPP changes the factory bottleneck, maintenance risk and production scheduling. The engineering business case must include high-pressure safety, water services, process validation and specialist support.
This introduces a critical asset and potentially a single point of failure. Maintenance strategy, spare-parts arrangements and fallback processing should be defined before capacity is fully dependent on the installation.
AFME interpretation: vertical integration can improve process control but increases ownership of specialist equipment and its lifecycle risk.
Engineering action: Review outsourced processing stages against a full in-house lifecycle business case, including contingency processing.