Food Processing: What does the term “hygienic design” mean in the context of food manufacturing facilities, and why is it crucial for modern production?
Steve Voelzke: It’s a facility design method and practice that helps facilitate cleaning, and it’s about mitigating contamination risk. The goal is to make it easier to clean, easier to sanitize and easier to inspect. We need to make sure that, for hygienic design, we look at best practices associated with component selection, manufacturing equipment, the processed goods and even the building envelope itself. For us, it’s about aligning the compliance for electrical safety with sanitary standards. It’s important because food and beverage is one of the most highly regulated industries in the world. Further, it becomes a public safety issue: often life and death. Fifteen percent of the population, or 1 in 6 people, gets sick every year, and about 3,000 of those people die, from food contamination per year. And recalls have increased significantly: In 2023, food recalls, according to the FDA, rose 19.6% to a five-year high.
FP: What do you see as the factors contributing to the increase in recalls, and what are some of the types of recalls that you’re seeing out there in food and beverage beyond the headlines?
SV: In the food and beverage industry, it’s the workforce issue. Twenty percent of people within the food and bev market are 20% understaffed — meaning they have less people doing the work — and turnover is 22%. So you have fewer people doing the work and less experienced people doing the work. Our customers report that in the sanitation department, it’s even higher. So, we have to make things easier to operate, inspect, maintain and clean. It’s all about better design, better overall installation and construction methods, and best practices to mitigate the risk.
FP: What other industry best practices or strategies influence the components side of the equipment when processors are putting together their facilities and lines?
SV: We really have to look at the construction phase. There are three main types of contamination to consider: biological, physical and chemical. To limit risk, we have to consider the principles of material selection from a corrosion perspective and a cleanability perspective, and that the material can handle the wet or dry environment. In food operations, we need to consider corrosion and ingress features for different operating states: operations, sanitation, inspection and maintenance, making sure that each one of those doesn’t negate the other.
In addition, the chemicals that go into these facilities have to be food grade. You might wash down everything after construction, but there’s sometimes still pulling lubricants inside of the conduit systems that are not food grade. So again, it’s just taking that little extra education and doing the right thing from day one and mitigating that long-term issue around contamination. We want to mitigate risk and make it easier.
FP: We all know water and electrical don’t mix, and a lot of these chemicals don’t mix with the components. Can you add a little bit more on the how Robroy is working to improve the standards in those areas?
SV: There are a lot of standards around hygienic design, so there’s a wealth of knowledge gained by the industry over the years. We can set those standards around products, but we’ve found that there’s nothing in them at a deep level around electrical infrastructure. There are areas where it’s pointing out the infrastructure, but it’s not clear. So we’re part of STI or the Steel Tube Institute with manufacturers of stainless-steel products like this. We have drafted a subcommittee and we’re trying to make sure that we draft good standards around electrical installation, and we’re hoping to submit that to third-party agencies to maybe improve the hygienic design across installation practices within food facilities.
FP: How does Robroy’s approach to hygienic design help food and beverage processors reduce long-term contamination risks?
SV: We have a design philosophy for our product design called “Jobs to be Done,” where we look at what our customer is trying to accomplish — not just our product offering. We did a study that said that electrical infrastructure is replaced due to corrosion every 2 to 8 years. Also, it said that contamination within those facilities was obviously the No. 1 risk concern. So we set out to solve the problem for our customers. Product features and benefits aren’t keeping customers awake at night. They want a safer and more reliable operation; they want peace of mind that their electrical infrastructure is reliable, and it mitigates that chance of contamination.
We look at it from the perspective of, how do we keep everybody safe from both an electrical and a food safety standpoint based on how installs are performed and how people work today.
FP: How do your hygienic design audits contribute to enhancing the reliability of a facility and reducing contamination risks?
SV: It goes back to “Jobs to be Done,” focused on being more reliable, easier to clean. When we do audits during the construction phase, we’re able to identify issues before they happen and work with the electrical contractor to make sure they’re using the right products for different transitions — just closing that loop. We’re also starting to design our products to ensure conduit fittings are even easier to clean and more reliable, and finding better tools to help installers leave no threads showing, for example. We help contractors with design assist. We help end users and engineering firms with specifications and do construction and OEM audits. We’ve built some Revit files to make it easier for designers to have all the components there when they configure the system, and we have a configurator on its way too. And that all, again, is to help make it easier to select the right products and make sure that you’re doing a better job of grabbing these platforms and using them to create a cleaner, safer and more reliable facility.
