Bühler introduces blockchain-ready solutions

Bühler has introduced blockchain-ready solutions to cut food poisoning rates and increase production efficiency.

Food safety outbreaks pose a significant burden to public health and welfare, as well as to the economy. Unsafe food is very costly for low and middle-income economies, which lose around USD 95 billion in productivity each year, with employees who are too ill to work. Product recalls are also extremely costly for food producers. “Time is critical when dealing with a food safety issue with the average direct cost of a product recall known to be around USD 10 million,” said Stuart Bashford, Bühler’s digital officer.

Buhler showcased its latest technologies to address the global challenges of product recalls and increase food safety standards at this year’s Hannover Messe:

Laatu reduces microbial contamination in dry goods using low-energy electrons. It is able to destroy more than 99.999% of Salmonella with minimal impact on the internal structure of the food, maintaining quality and nutritional value.

When compared to conventional technologies, Laatu has a significantly smaller footprint and can be implemented anywhere in the processing line. Moreover, Laatu provides a cost-efficient and environmentally-friendly solution, reducing energy consumption by up to 80% in comparison to steam, without introducing water or chemicals.

With a connection to Bühler Insights, Laatu can be used as a powerful tool in food safety auditing as its real-time monitoring system captures processing parameters, dates, times, and product batches. With a potential link to blockchain, it is capable of providing an accurate and secure audit trail for food producers and all players in the supply-chain.

Tubex Pro is a smart, self-optimising scale system that produces a constant flow of production data, self-optimising its measuring algorithm according to product flow characteristics and the plant environment.

With hygienic design, a high level of food safety and the potential to securely log product data using blockchain technology, Tubex Pro with Bühler Insights supports safe food production with full transparency and traceability along the food value chain.

These solutions connect to the Bühler Insights IoT platform powered by Microsoft Azure.

Bühler’s Yield Management System enables yield monitoring from anywhere at any time. Based on its integration with Bühler Insights, it makes deviations between different recipes visible and comparable. Moreover, various production sites can be monitored and benchmarked.

Laatu, Tubex Pro, and Bühler’s Yield Management System are connected to Bühler Insights, which is powered by Microsoft Azure. Data can be integrated with the blockchain where it cannot be changed, providing consumers, retailers, and food producers with an almost real-time, traceable and secure audit trail.

“With this integrated food safety and yield management solution, you can capture the date, time, batch, and input parameters used on a specific product and then store all that data on the blockchain,” said Nicolas Meneses, Laatu project manager at Bühler.

“Using blockchain you can see if a food ingredient has been properly processed in seconds rather than days – and with a high degree of certainty. You can then quickly take action. This helps reduce the number of people exposed to potentially unsafe food and also to cut food waste as the specific batch can be traced.”

“With our global reach and network, we have a tremendous leverage on bringing down food poisoning levels and help our customers reduce food waste,” said Ian Roberts, chief technology officer at Bühler Group.

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