Is Vacuum Lifting even right for my Food & Beverage business?

Change can be intimidating. Acknowledging the obsolescence of existing infrastructures and the dire need for modernisation is a tough pill to swallow. Yet, the consequences of inaction are far more severe. It’s time for introspection and tough questions:

• Is your business operating at full throttle yet yielding low productivity?
• Are your workers under excessive strain?
• Do you struggle to meet the evolving demands of customers?

If yes the answer to even just one of the questions signals a pressing need to invest in technology. The lingering effects of the pandemic, coupled with skill shortages and soaring inflation, compound the challenges faced by the UK and EU industries. The Food & Beverage sector, heavily reliant on global sourcing, processing, and distribution, is at a crossroads.

Understanding Vacuum Lifting for Food & Beverage Industry

Vacuum lifting technology emerges as a beacon of hope, promising to enhance productivity while bolstering worker safety—a true win-win scenario.

What is Vacuum Lifting?

Vacuum lifting operates on a simple yet ingenious principle: Utilising suction to manoeuvre materials safely and efficiently. A vacuum pump powers the system, so that it can grip items. An easy-to-use handle allows the operator to lift products up and down to the needed heights while a jib or bridge crane supports horizontal movement, like moving a product from a conveyor to a pallet. Various suction feet can be deployed depending on the nature of the products and handling requirements. In the Food & Beverage industry, vacuum lifters are constructed with stainless steel and sanitary/FDA-approved components, ensuring safety and hygiene.

A diverse array of lifting equipment is available, capable of handling everything from raw foods like meats and cheeses to packaged items like sacks and kegs. These lifters play a crucial role in receiving, processing, packaging, and palletising food products.

Challenges in the Food & Beverage Industry

Fancy lifters are all well and good but are they just an overcomplicated and overengineered approach to lifting? No. They have been proven to boost productivity and reduce strain on the body of your workers by up to 80%, making it a safer and happier workplace.

Growth potential = Decline potential

Sounds contradictory, doesn’t it? How can the chance for expansion also imply a risk for reduction? The food and beverage sector has consistently been a significant and vital worldwide economy. In the U.S., the Department of Agriculture states that agriculture, food, and related industries contribute 5.4% to the GDP and employ 10.4% of the workforce. Moreover, last year, Americans spent 12.8% of their household budget on food, second only to housing and transportation.

For industry leaders, there’s a vast scope for growth. However, growth brings with it risks that can adversely affect operations, profitability, and reputation. Many of these risks are interconnected, and it would be prudent for management to identify and address these risks before they become expensive.

Keeping up with consumer demands

As people are becoming more and more health conscious, food trends are opting towards healthier options without preservatives or additives making shelf life last longer. This means produce needs to be handled and shipped quicker so that by the time it gets to the supermarket shelf it is not spoiled.

If you are not in the line of perishable goods, consumer demands are still impacting your business. We live in the era of the instantaneous. Gone are the days of waiting 3 weeks for orders, people want them immediately, with offerings of next-day or same-day delivery options putting pressure on your workers to be more productive more consistently, leaving no room to be tired, lose pace or even have injuries. That brings us to our next challenge…

Worker injuries & shortage of labour

Repetitive lifting causes wear and tear on workers’ bodies, leading to long-term health conditions, Musculoskeletal disorders (MSDs) are the most common kind of work-related illness and include problems like lower back pain, joint injuries and repetitive strain injuries. The leading causes of MSDs include:

• Repetitive heavy lifting (think sacks, kegs and barrels)
• Bending and twisting (move product from one place to another)
• Repeating something often (line of work by nature is repetitive)
• Working too long without breaks
• Working in awkward and uncomfortable positions
• Not dealing with symptoms quickly enough

The job of a worker involves standing on their feet for most of the day, bending and twisting to pick up and empty or move product into other arrears either into mixing bowls or simply moving products for storage.

How do you address these concerns without running the risk of becoming inefficient? Let the vacuums do the lifting. This means workers aren’t putting their bodies through stress-related strain, work is maintained at a constant pace and workers can take a normal amount of breaks without running the risk of injury and without costing you money.

TAWI’s Impactful Vacuum Lifters for Food & Beverage Industry

We are making a tangible difference in the industry. For instance, Dugges Brewery sought our expertise to alleviate the physical strain on workers lifting up to 200 kegs daily weighing 30kg+.

The implementation of vacuum lifting solutions allowed for safer and more efficient operations. Learn more here.

Benefits of Vacuum Lifting for Food & Beverage Businesses

Efficiency and Productivity

Unlike humans, vacuum lifters do not tire and have far greater lifting capabilities. While initially manual lifting may be quicker in the first hour, by midday workers begin to tire and no longer lift at the same speed they were working at at the start of the day. Vacuum is lifting and working at a consistent and predictable pace, ultimately making them more productive.

Secondly, as vacuum lifters aren’t impacted by external factors such as illness, exhaustion or personal matters, there is no deviation in how they work throughout the week, year etc.

Safety and Ergonomics

Workers’ safety should be essential to your operations. If it is not then we strongly suggest reassessing your values as an employer. However, just because you value worker safety doesn’t mean you need to forgo productivity. Our solution means more work, and less risk to equal to greater productivity. By letting the vacuum do the lifting and your workers doing the operating of the vacuum you dramatically reduce lifting-related injuries. Our solutions aren’t here to replace people, but to help people. An investment in TAWI is an investment in your workforce, not a replacement.

Employing lifting technology opens up a greater pool of people you can hire. This is becoming of increasing importance in the Food & Beverage sector as labour shortages continue to rise and the working population is getting older and older. With our solutions, anyone of any age or strength can lift.

Product Quality and Hygiene

The benefits of hygiene and contamination control are significant with vacuum lifting. As the technology eliminates the need for workers to physically touch food during the lifting process, it significantly reduces the risk of contamination. This is particularly crucial in the food and beverage industry where maintaining hygiene standards is paramount.

Our vacuum lifting products are constructed with stainless steel and materials approved by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA). This ensures they are safe for use with food and can withstand sanitisation processes without any damage to the vacuum lift.

By minimising direct contact between workers and food products, vacuum lifting not only enhances hygiene but also helps in preserving the quality of the products. This is especially important for businesses that handle sensitive or perishable items, where maintaining product integrity is key to customer satisfaction and regulatory compliance.

The food and beverage industry stands at a pivotal juncture

Embracing innovative technologies like vacuum lifting is not just beneficial but essential. Vacuum lifting technology offers a practical solution that aligns with the industry’s commitment to hygiene and efficiency, worker health and safety as well as boosting productivity. By investing in such advancements, businesses can ensure sustainable operations and a competitive edge in a rapidly evolving market.

As we’ve seen with TAWI’s impactful solutions, the integration of vacuum lifting can lead to significant improvements in safety, ergonomics, and product quality, ultimately fostering a healthier, more productive, and future-ready Food & Beverage sector.

To embrace technology is to fortify your business. Get in touch with a member of our team today to discuss your business’ future.