5 Ways to Combat Rising Food Manufacturing Costs

With production costs on the rise, discover how product inspection can help

6 мин.

7 Mar, 2025

Daniela Verhaeg, PR and Communications Manager

Did you know that your production equipment can help you combat your rising food manufacturing costs? With increasing material and energy costs and potential supply chain and transportation problems added to the mix, manufacturers need solutions that help combat these rising costs while also improving production efficiency and meeting compliance requirements. The pressure is mounting, but here’s where your product inspection equipment can act as more than just a quality and safety control point.

Installing smart integrated product inspection solutions along the production line not only helps to improve product safety and quality, but it can also help you avoid costly product recalls and boost your productivity – directly impacting the bottom line.

Keep reading to discover five ways that you can combat rising food manufacturing costs using smart, integrated product inspection solutions.

1. Reduce Material and Energy Costs

Installing metal detection or x-ray inspection equipment early in the production process allows you to detect and reject contaminated ingredients before further value is added later downstream. This can reduce packaging waste and save costs further along the production line, reducing the number of final products that need to be rejected, as well as the time and labor costs involved in dealing with production interruptions.

X-ray inspection systems from METTLER TOLEDO house Optimum Power Generators, which release the optimum amount of x-ray power required for the application. This feature produces significant energy savings by reducing power consumption and extending the lifetime of the system generator.

2. Optimize Human Resources

If your manufacturing plant suffers from high staff turnover, you will know that training new operators takes time and can slow down production. This can also increase the risk of human errors.

Pre-programmed software algorithms in product inspection solutions can provide easy product set-ups and changeovers on modern metal detection and x-ray systems. This means you can automate manual processes to reduce risk of errors and speed up production.

Automatic testing capabilities for metal detectors can also support your operators, as it removes the need to often work at height to improve worker safety and frees up their time to work on other tasks.

3. Avoid Unnecessary Product Waste

Precision checkweighing systems verify the contents of packaged goods. Advanced checkweighing software from METTLER TOLEDO allows you to set fill levels, monitor them and correct them when needed to improve overall production line efficiency. This also reduces costly over-fill, and the savings in waste reduction can be substantial over the course of a production run.

X-ray inspection can also perform checks to identify incorrect fill levels and help to avoid waste. A combined x-ray and checkweighing solution provides even further efficiencies by carrying out these checks in one integrated system – another big tick in the world of efficiency.

4. Modernize Data Management

In manufacturing, data collected from product inspection equipment can have a big impact on improving operational efficiencies and boosting productivity.

Data management software such as ProdX^TM automatically collects and stores product inspection data, providing paperless documentation of reject incidents required for compliance. This saves significant time as you no longer need to complete forms, or file and collate information for reports and trend analysis – ProdX does it all for you!

In terms of cost benefits, if a product recall needs to be actioned, the data management software enables you to identify the exact products affected, instead of wasting larger batches that might include perfectly good products.

5. Minimize Downtime

Unplanned downtime can negatively influence both productivity and profitability. To combat production downtime, you can firstly invest in smart and modern technology that is designed to optimize uptime on the production line. Secondly, you can invest in the service of the machines to make sure they run as continuously and effectively as possible.

Having access to efficient service support helps increase uptime and maximize equipment performance through preventive maintenance. On-site and remote support, as well as spare parts kits stored on site, enable a quick fault resolution, maximizing uptime.

In addition to automatic set-up and testing, having more efficient product changeovers also reduces production downtime. Combination systems, such as a checkweigher and an x-ray machine in one system, reduce the time required for product changeovers by using one single interface for all inspection processes. Furthermore, Product Clustering technology on metal detectors also reduces the frequency of changeovers by grouping similar products on a single setting.

Avoiding Product Recalls

We know this is technically a sixth way to combat rising costs, but one of the biggest benefits to product inspection equipment is helping manufacturers avoid costly product recalls. Recalling products is an expensive task – the logistics of the recall itself, plus the amount of wasted product that needs to be discarded. On top of these costs, manufacturers and retailers can also face costly fines and the costs to a brand’s reputation can be irreparable.

Metal detection and x-ray inspection solutions detect and reject foreign body contaminants from food products before they reach the consumer. Dynamic checkweighers virtually eliminate product under-fill, helping you comply with Weights and Measures regulations, and label inspection and verification makes sure products are correctly labeled, saving a company the cost of a very expensive product recall - as well as protecting brand reputations.

The above solutions are only a few examples on how to combat rising costs. Download our guide '5 Ways to Combat Rising Food Manufacturing Costs' to find out more.

We also have an on-demand webinar ‘5 Ways to Combat Rising Food Manufacturing Costs’, which includes best practice case studies that demonstrate how food manufacturers have harnessed product inspection systems to reduce costs, decrease waste and improve profitability and efficiency.

About the Author

Daniela Verhaeg, PR and Communications Manager, METTLER TOLEDO Product Inspection

Daniela is responsible for global media relations and all third-party activities for the Product Inspection division at METTLER TOLEDO. Having been with the company since 2008, and previously working as Marketing Manager for X-ray Inspection, Daniela has a wealth of knowledge and expertise both within marketing and communications and product inspection.