Preserving resources and guaranteeing health safety

Priority to food safety

The water cycle in the food industry must guard against any physico-chemical and microbial risks (pH, pollution, suspended solids content, etc.) at every stage of the transformation process. Sanitary quality is all the more crucial when it comes to ingredient water, food-grade steam or industrial equipment that comes into contact with the products, or more generally when water is considered as a foodstuff.
While the quality of utility and waste water remains key in the food industry in the same way as in other industrial sectors, the sanitary constraints of ingredient water remain one of the fundamentals of this industry.

Water efficiency, a productivity and environmental issue

Water is a dwindling resource for which there is no alternative. However demanding the treatments, processes and solutions for guaranteeing water quality in the food industry, they must not sacrifice the preservation of this resource. It's a question of protecting the environment, but also of protecting production against any interruption or drop in performance.
The food industry's water strategy must therefore meet these challenges throughout the water cycle: from input to output.

As soon as it enters the industrial network, the water used in the food industry has to be potabilised. Whether it is borehole or surface water, specific treatments are required to disinfect or filter it, while municipal water, which is already drinkable, may require additional treatments to enter the industrial process.
These treatment or potabilisation processes are essential to guarantee water quality that complies with regulatory requirements, while at the same time safeguarding the resource. It is in the sector's interest to adopt a technological approach that allows treatment methods to be diversified and customised for each site.

Water used in food production includes process water - germination, CIP and processes such as heat exchange to heat or cool foodstuffs - as well as ingredient water, and is at the heart of products and food safety.
Food industries have to find ways of reconciling industrial performance, risk prevention and compliance with legislation (drinking water, ingredient water, etc.). The treatments applied therefore have several purposes: to protect and maintain facilities, to improve water and energy efficiency, but also to respond to the specific constraints of each sector, such as decarbonation in the Beverage sector, pasteurisation in the Canning sector, or the elimination of endocrine disruptors such as chlorates in the Milk and Baby Products sector.

The treatment of utility water (boilers, cooling towers) is at the crossroads of several objectives: reducing operating costs, energy consumption and environmental impact, while optimising equipment performance.
Formulations for utility water have anti-scaling, anti-bacterial and anti-corrosion objectives, in order to protect and maintain equipment, and optimise its performance and therefore its energy consumption over time.

Manufacturers in the food industry are facing the challenge of optimising the water cycle. Faced with dwindling water resources, manufacturers need to find solutions to alleviate water stress and avoid exposing their production to the risk of stoppage or decline due to lack of water.

The environmental issue is obviously another priority, with, for example, particularly stringent regulations governing the presence of chlorides in wastewater, while the quantities of water discharged are also increasingly controlled. As a result, the food industry is following a strategy dedicated to its wastewater, favouring reuse both in the long loop at the end of the WWTP, and in the short loop by treating and redirecting process water towards alternative uses.