Digitalization Is Changing The Nature Of Food Production

The food processing industry is on the cusp of revolution. Pressing concerns, such as labor scarcity, the increasing complexity of consumer-ready products, and a growing urgency for environmental conservatorship have accelerated the need to adopt technologies that offer more sustainable, agile, and efficient practices across the industry. Combined, these factors accelerate the need for Marel‘s solutions. Our vision is to become the digital partner of choice for the food processing industry. By transforming ourselves, we transform the future of food.

Already, Marel’s digital platform is the food processing industry’s first choice for bridging applications and machines. To remain the global leader in our industry, we continue to invest above industry standards in innovation. To be precise, we invest 6% of annual revenue into the research and development of solutions that accelerate industry-wide transformation.

Introducing the food industry to new technologies
That 6% translates into highly automated and digitized smart factories that do more than standard offerings on the market.

Food processors need to be aware of what’s happening in every area of operations in real-time—from fishing scales to filleting machines to delivery vehicles. Applications that integrate with and connect each component of operations are a critical element of modern food processing. The industry needs a very high level of automated data management with real-time information: From satellite forecasting and consumption trends to fishing catches and farm harvests, processors must be able to adapt their production throughout the day to cater to actual consumer demand, while providing transparency into elements like exact weight and calorie count, CO2 footprint, and origin.

Our journey started with intelligent algorithms and IoT-like technologies before the term ‘internet of things’ was first coined. In 1994, we connected hundreds of devices together to give one customer an overview of their full production. From there, we graduated to the sophisticated Innova Food Processing Software, which provides food manufacturers with comprehensive process overview and control, real-time traceability, and unmatched throughput and yield monitoring. Now, we have more than 40 software offerings in our portfolio.

Leading the industry into its hybrid-cloud future
And we are poised to grow. As customer and consumer needs change, and factories and food trails become more automated, the need for greater integration along the entire food chain takes on monumental importance.

To that end, Marel is moving to a new architecture for its digital offerings, which will augment the scalability, agility, and intuitiveness of its solutions while increasing uptime. The platform itself combines the security and high availability of on-premises storage solutions with the incomparable processing speed of the cloud. In this way, our customers will have access to both real-time information and AI-driven predictive analytics to help them make data-driven decisions about their operations from minute-to-minute. In other words: They won’t miss a thing.

As we innovate, we also aim to simplify our product offerings. Based on customer interviews, we’re creating five product families that represent areas of value. Those include logistics; planning and optimization; food safety management; performance management; and production control. The five sources of value coalesce into a comprehensive set of digital solutions, with the goal of providing customers with all the tools they need to succeed.

One-stop shop simplifies the road to digital transformation
This new platform will be a single source of truth for our customers—and their customers. It fully integrates with all Marel products out-of-the-box and will come with APIs for third-party software and hardware integrations (and integrations with any future acquisitions). With this solution, we not only realize our ambitious vision of revolutionizing our customers’ operations, but we will also, in turn, propel Marel into the future.

Connectivity and scalable solutions support revenue generation and growth
Digitalization it is at the center of our strategy and growth. Digitalization will enhance our performance with integrated solutions for hardware, software, service and spares. Additionally, a more scalable platform enables us to provide fit-for-purpose solutions and connect the ecosystem along the entire value chain. Across industries and production steps, the data gathered will boost the value of our significant processing know-how and expertise. It will also facilitate integrations with future acquisitions and enable seamless integration of our current offerings. We believe we can deliver cutting-edge services and products for our customers. In partnership with them, we will transform the way food is processed.

Learn more—straight from Marel’s leadership
To learn more about how Marel’s digital products will change the future of food and contribute to our ambitious growth strategy, tune into the fourth event in our Capital Markets Day 360° series on December 2, with speakers Arni Sigurdsson, Chief Strategy Officer and EVP Strategic Business Units, Anna Kristin Palsdottir, EVP Innovation and Hjalti Thorarinsson, VP Innova Software.