6 Trends that will drive the global meat industry in the wake of the Covid-19 Pandemic

#1

Consumers are looking for nutrition-packed foods

With today’s instant access to information, if consumers cannot understand or find out where and how a meat product is made and what is in it, they will be more inclined to leave it behind in search of alternative products made by companies that have a genuine commitment to sustainability and improving the environment.

Plant-based meats in the form of burgers and nuggets will also continue to rise in favor with likewise, an increase in demand for healthier, quality frozen meat products to accommodate changing lifestyles, particularly for the maturing millennial generation who are now balancing a healthy family and career. Transparency into how meat is produced and where it comes from will be key for the meat businesses.

#2

Meat processors need software and solutions to support the online shopping business which is growing rapidly.

Its market value has more than doubled between 2018 and 2020, indicating that consumers are beginning to feel more comfortable ordering essentials and certain foods online. When the coronavirus COVID-19 pandemic hit in early 2020, having a digital presence for online ordering and delivery services became critical for businesses to remain afloat.

#3

More investments in open architecture 

Global meat processors will be investing in concepts that have open architecture, with design which can be quickly and easily deployed as a more standardized way of running and maintaining their shopfloor systems.

Significant investment may be required to develop pre-defined packages to ensure a wide range of functionality that are bundled into one package to cover the entire enterprise and to cover processes of their business across production sites. These concepts should be based on state-of-the-art agile architecture allowing for the solutions to be designed around maximum capabilities for data collection and at the same time allowing for data to be gathered due to outages or system down times.

These packages will be developed with the future in mind and will be deployed and streamlined ready for IoT integration industry 4.0. All this together can minimize the direct contact between humans and meat processing.

#4

Digital strategy

For future business growth, having a digital strategy will be key for meat processors. Legal requirements will demand it and consumers will confirm it by only buying top quality products via on-line platforms without having seen or touched the actual product. Disregard less of what country, area, or region they are in the consumer will want to know where the product came from, what its entire contents are and how it was produced and packaged.

Meat processors will only meet these demands by having systems in place which can provide meta-data to feed product search engines to find the correct products as demanded.

#5 

Innovation & differentiation towards increased effectiveness

With so many different products available for purchase in a multitude of channels—from in-store, farmer’s markets, online, social media and more—product innovation and differentiation will be important to middle market meat processors. Large processors are already looking to emerging technologies for help with this. Creative solutions that meet consumer preferences around sustainability, like edible packaging, for instance, will be on the rise.

Likewise, innovative ways to automate repetitive processes will also provide opportunities for businesses to improve production, back-office processes, supply management, fulfillment, and delivery. In addition, using acquired consumer and business data for better business decision-making will be key as well as implementing a comprehensive digital strategy.

#6

Use of artificial intelligence

Artificial Intelligence will become one of the largest game changers in coming years. Robot, software technology & remote working to reduce cost. On the meat production side, every single ingredient going into a product is going to be unique and needs to be inspected. This is necessary to know if, a pork belly or beef ribs are usable requires an assessment of its size, shape, color, and marks (for a fundamental understanding of how machine vision works.)

For many years only humans could make these highly complex assessments at a reasonable speed, but this will change. Automatic systems are now able in seconds to collect hundreds of pieces of data on a single meat primal and rapidly make an assessment on it. A system can gather and process all that data from hundreds of individual ingredients as they rapidly move across a conveyor belt. These systems can significantly bring down labor costs and reduce waste. It is reasonable to expect that AI will very quickly be used more and more by meat processing plants to improve raw material sorting, find efficiencies, and increase food safety.

Many major players in the meat processing industry believe AI will have a real impact on the sector in the near term. It is not really a question of if AI will see greater use in the industry, it is just a question of how much and how quickly.

Author

Stuart Mc Bride

Area Sales Manager

smb@frontmatec.com

+4561634547