As part of its rapid expansion, Grupo Petrópolis - Brazil's second-largest brewing conglomerate - has built two new breweries, each with a capacity of six million hectolitres. Krones won the turnkey order for the two breweries. [ + ]

PFD is using Kronos workforce management solutions deployed in the Kronos Cloud to streamline its business and deliver operational efficiencies. The company has seen a 68% decrease in payroll enquiries and 84% reduction in 'outside-of-cycle' pays.

When German health authorities incorrectly linked a deadly E. coli outbreak to Spanish cucumbers in 2011, farmers across the European Union watched produce rot in their fields and warehouses, losing millions of euros in the process. [ + ]

Food crop yields and profitability soar when non-fertile flies are dropped over growing areas where they mate with the females but do not father a next generation of pests. But male pests sterilised by radiation tend not to be as attractive to the females - so what is needed is a way to "George Clooney-ise" the sterile flies. [ + ]

To ensure no keg filled with caustic lye leaves its brewery, Erdinger Weissbräu installed a FLIR Systems A-Series thermal imaging camera that measures the temperature of every keg before it leaves the conveyor belt of the filling installation. [ + ]

A newly developed laser-based detection system is able to identify Salmonella, E. coli, Vibrio, Listeria and many more foodborne pathogens in less than 24 hours.

As its business expanded, natural spring water company Wet Fix found that its coding equipment couldn't keep up. The company chose two Linx CJ400 CIJ coders and a 30 W e-SolarMark laser from Matthews Australasia.

Environmental scientists have warned the long-term effects of synthetic chemicals used in packaging, food storage and processing food could be damaging our health. [ + ]

Implementing the Neste Jacobs NAPCON Suite enabled Finnish whey powder processor Valio to increase its production by 10% without investing in any hardware or using any extra energy in the process.

The Bio-Resource Processing Alliance (BPA) has NZ$2.5 million per year available to help NZ biological-based manufacturing businesses gain maximum value from waste and by-products.

There is much to be said in favour of radiation-curing inks, as world-leading manufacturers of packaging print equipment already know. Because UV inks cure faster, work throughput is much more positive than with traditional print drying tunnels.

Searching for a solution to replace a traditional vacuum filter, a well-known Italian producer tested TMCI Padovan's Dynamos machine, supplied with NORD gearmotors. Happy with the test, the company installed the Dynamos machine.

Aseptics have now breached the final building block in a beverage bottling line with the incorporation of the stretch blow-moulding machine in the aseptic concept. Aseptics now extend from preform decontamination through the aseptic blow module and aseptic filler to the aseptic closer.

The median salary for food scientists in Australia is $102,689, according to the latest Institute of Food Technologists Employment and Salary Survey. [ + ]

With its bottle-to-bottle recycling capability, Stute is processing its own PET waste and in future will also use non-returnable PET containers from its customers, using the decontaminated flakes as an admixture to the preform production process on injection-moulding machines. [ + ]