The EU dairy industry is very dominant in the world market. Worldwide, New Zealand and the EU are the largest net exporters. New Zealand is the world’s top dairy exporter, accounting for around 40% of the international trade, the EU with over 26% and the USA with 16% (Ref: The competitive position of the European food and drink industry, Final Report 2016. ECSIP Consortium European Commission)
The EU- 28 exports amount €10bn to other countries, while New Zealand exports amount to €7.6bn. Although the export value is increasing the world, market share of the EU is – according to EU Milk Market Observatory – decreasing, since the world market is growing faster than the EU can meet. The competitiveness of the dairy industry in EU forces the players to take strategic actions for quality control and product optimization to enhance their competitivity.
Q-Interline develops high-tech analytical solutions for process and product quality optimization, based on NIR spectroscopy and correct sampling for customers in the food, feed, dairy, agricultural, bio fuels, pharmaceutical and chemical industry.
More than 250 clients and over 550 Q-Interline installations runs worldwide since 1996 and makes Q-Interline a recognized player in the analyser market.
The InSight Pro on-line analyser concept provides a novel Fourier Transform Near-Infrared (FT-NIR) solution with a set of cloud functionalities aimed to enter new international markets within the food industry, and in particular the dairy sector.
Some important problems in the food industry are how to utilize raw material and production capacity in the most optimal way in respect to; product quality, raw material usage, reduce waste of raw material, reduction of scraped end-product, reduction of energy consumption. It is without doubt, that the global population increases constantly, and so does the demand for food products of constant quality level. Hence, high utilization of raw material and less scrap production is needed, along with optimal usages of production capacity and energy. Only when the production is under control, sustainable usage of global resources is possible.
The best way to address these problems is to control the quality of the raw material, operational processes and to monitor the final product. In order to gain control, the food manufacturer must have important intelligence in real time. He must have process control strategies and be able to react in due time to changes occurring in the production process.
The initial objective was to present a reliable high precision on-line analyser to be installed easily without cutting into existing pipe systems in the dairy production, but only install a weld-in adapter or a standard pipe connection. Moreover, to create a reliable analyser with no annual maintenance, no annual NIR Lamp change, no Laser lamp change, same calibration models as the laboratory analyser and with the best signal to noise ratio.
The secondary- but more important target with the InSight Pro project was to upscale, pilot and commercialize the first complete on-line solution with integrated cloud services which would significantly improve the quality- and process control of dairy products, maximizing their added value and making all hardware and application maintenance autonomous.
The conclusions from the project has been that we have been able to create a unique analyser concept to optimize food production. The InSight Pro concept enables food producers to reduce waste of raw material as well as scrap of expensive finished food products. The InSight Pro concept furthermore delivers important intelligence of the production stability and enables the food producers to optimize energy consumption in the production in particular when it comes to milk and whey powder driers. Finally, the InSight Pro concept allows customers to produce food and dairy products to a constant high quality level with a minimum of maintenance and automated remote surveillance.
The InSight Pro project has had a positive impact on employment of resources in Q-Interline and at our partners and suppliers. The number of FTEs in Q-Interline has increased by 31% during the project
