The food processing industry is one of the rapidly growing industries globally and it is nearly impossible that this industry will encounter a decline in the near future. Food processing has been going on since pre-historic days. Earlier, fermenting, slaughtering, and preserving foods with salt were some common methods in practice. But the late nineteenth century was the era when this industry started evolving with the advent of innovation and technology like canning, artificial sweeteners, freeze drying, and preservatives. Then came the era of frozen foods such as TV dinners, which became readily available in all the supermarkets. But before we move on to the analysis of this industry, let’s take a brief hiatus to understand food processing a bit.
What does food processing mean?
Food processing can be defined as a new world encyclopedia that comprises of techniques and methods to transform raw materials into food or raw food or into other forms that are fit for consumption by humans and animals. This industry basically deals with harvested crops, slaughtered animal products, and produces them in a very attractive form. These processed foods are easily marketable and have a long-life.
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Benefits of Food Processing
- Preservation
- Marketing of food
- Distribution
- Protection from pathogens and other toxic elements
- Easy to prepare
At the same time, processed foods have a few drawbacks too like loss of essential nutrients and the impact of additives.
Food Processing Industry Analysis
#1. The food processing industry is one of the sectors that loosely tracks demographic trends like income and population growth.
#2. Companies in this industry generate revenue from the sale of food and ingredients to lots of customers, ranging from restaurants to supermarket chains.
#3. This industry is appreciated for its ability to deliver positive investment returns consistently and countries like India are expecting to cross $540 billion by 2020 in the food processing industry.
#4. In the past 20 years, this industry has delivered high single-digit annual total returns with very less volatility than the broader market indexes.
#5. Companies in this industry have several defensive characteristics like constant growth, solid balance sheet, and ample interest coverage, which establishes them as “safe harbor” selections during stock market and major economic downturns.
#7. There is a variety of different machinery including cutting and forming machines, automated ovens, mixers and blending machines, sortation equipment, wrapping equipment and filling equipment, which evidently proves that for this industry, automation has become critical to address the required levels of production speed, quality control, overall profitability and labor shortages.