Automation in the Food Industry: The solution to the labor shortage

By 2030, the French food industry will lose 41% of its current workforce—an alarming prospect that threatens food production in factories. With over 24,000 expected departures and positions already difficult to fill today, the sector is facing an unprecedented challenge.

The obstacles are piling up: an aging workforce, increasing recruitment difficulties, and demanding working conditions. The food industry must reinvent itself to survive. In response to these challenges, automation is emerging as a strategic solution to ensure business continuity and performance.

Automation: A Key Response

Integrating automated solutions helps offset labor shortages by reducing the need for human intervention in repetitive, strenuous, and physically demanding tasks. In particular, smart conveyor solutions play a crucial role in optimizing workflows and improving working conditions.

Benefits of automation in the food industry:

• Reduced strain on workers: decreasing physical effort by automating the transportation of raw materials and finished products;
• Improved safety: lower risk of accidents caused by manual handling;
• Smoother operations: reduced downtime and optimized production speeds;
• Greater precision and traceability: fewer human errors, more consistency, and better product tracking.

The Key Role of Smart Conveying and Transitics

Acemia’s conveying and transitic solutions minimize human intervention in repetitive tasks while ensuring smooth and efficient production. Here are a few examples:

• Custom conveyors for every need: tailor-made systems designed to meet space constraints, production speeds, and product-specific requirements;
• Robot Additional Ingredient Depositor (RAID): an automated solution for precise ingredient addition, enhancing efficiency and reducing manual handling;
• Cleaning-in-Place (CIP): ensuring optimal hygiene without prolonged line stoppages.

These innovations not only lighten operators’ workloads but also ensure a more consistent and high-performing production process.

A Strategic Approach for Sustainable Competitiveness

Automation is a strategic lever for improving your production’s long-term competitiveness. By reducing dependency on labor and optimizing resources, it not only increases productivity but also enhances the industry’s ability to address economic challenges. Automated solutions allow operators to focus on higher-value tasks, such as equipment maintenance or quality control, while ensuring greater efficiency in production lines.

Investing in high-performance conveyor solutions means:

• Lower costs associated with production downtime and frequent employee training;
• Increased employee satisfaction by reducing repetitive and physically demanding tasks;
• Better compliance with hygiene and food safety standards.

Automation is a major asset in tackling labor shortages in the food industry. It helps compensate for workforce shortages by optimizing processes while improving safety and production line performance. However, for automation to be fully effective, it must be tailored to the specific needs of each factory.

At Acemia, we design custom solutions that address the unique requirements of your production, considering your space constraints, production speeds, and hygiene standards. This ensures smoother, more efficient, and safer production.

Want to learn more about our smart conveying and transitic solutions? Contact us to discuss your needs!