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Food Processing Awards 2022 – your winners

01 November 2022

We are delighted to be able to announce the winners of the Food Processing Awards 2022 The awards aim to recognise both companies and individuals for demonstrating engineering excellence and innovation within the UK food and beverage manufacturing sector. 

The awards were presented at a ceremony held on the evening of the Appetite for Engineering 2022 event – 13th October – at the atmospheric and beautiful Coombe Abbey Hotel. As in previous years the judging panel whittled down the nominations to create a list of finalists which were then presented to the readers of Food Processing magazine to allow them to have an input into who they wanted the winners to be.  

The awards this year were hosted by the delightfully silly comedian, Josh Daniels, who put a smile on everyone’s face before we got down to the slightly more serious business of handing out some awards.

This year the worthy Food Processing Award winners were:

HYGIENE & FOOD SAFETY (Sponsored by Kluber Lubrication)
Habasit – Super HyCLEAN is a novel concept for hygienic plastic modular belt design to support food safety especially in fish, meat and poultry processing. The belt’s unique construction eliminates areas where debris from protein processing could be trapped, potentially forming a breeding ground for bacteria and biofilm. The solution also demonstrates a significant improvement in cleanability.

ENVIRONMENTAL & SUSTAINABILITY (Sponsored by SKF)
Holmach – Has worked with French company, Revtech to develop a heat treatment solution for the processing of materials that are used as moisture retainers for the seedlings grown in vertical farms. This solution sees the chosen growing media being indirectly pre-heated in a controlled environment. Condensation is carefully controlled to ensure there is no regrowth of micro-organisms.

CONTINUOUS IMPROVEMENT (Sponsored by Vega Controls)
EUCHNER – the PUWER for Food & Beverage Industry training course one-day courses cover the content and application of the Provision and Use of Work Equipment Regulations 1998 and explain how this legislation applies to manufacturers or processors in the food and beverage industry, helping to ensure improvement of safety in the workplace and a good understanding of legislative requirements.

SMART/DIGITAL TECHNOLOGY (Sponsored by EUCHNER)
BUSCH – Otto digital services help food and beverage manufacturers to reduce their production downtime and removes vacuum pump maintenance from their workload.

PROCESS & PACKAGING (Sponsored by Wire Belt Company)
Promtek – A recent upgrade for a well-known food manufacturer has improved weighing accuracy with the StoraWeigh 9000 process control software which was installed along with new weighing vessels and a combination of new control panels that help deliver raw materials in a more efficient and repeatable way. 

ROBOTICS & AUTOMATION (Sponsored by ifm Electronic)
Beckhoff – Xplanar is an innovative transport solution that combines the advantages of conventional transport technologies with magnetic levitation to offer free 2D movement with up to six degrees of freedom. Hygienic versions of the solution are available for use in the food industry. 

YOUNG ENGINEER OF THE YEAR (Sponsored by Festo)
Hamza Iqbal –  Bakkavor

Hamza has worked well with the team at Cumberland and has shown great potential when dealing with colleagues, contractors, permits and on specific projects. He takes on any tasks issued to him and has already become an integral part of the engineering team, assisting with the day-to-day running of the engineering department. Utilising the training given to him over the past three years he is now an expert in understanding the layout of the site and machinery. He is willing to work with all members of the team and asks questions when unsure. He has shadowed engineers on a day-to-day basis and taken on additional pneumatic and electrical fault finding tasks.

Hamza has become an asset to the site by involving himself with other functions and tasks such as audit trackers, health and safety, technical, engineering compliance and projects. He demonstrates accountability and self-motivation daily. He is also keen to increase his knowledge of preventative maintenance. 

LIFETIME ACHIEVEMENT AWARD (Sponsored by Food Processing)
Peter Whitfield – Appetite for Engineering consultant.

This award is presented to a professional who has demonstrated their dedication and commitment to the development of products, applications, services and people, to help the food and beverage processing industry to become ever more efficient and productive. 

Its aim is to recognise and reward personal contributions to the advancement of our industry. 

Over the last few years, one name has often been suggested as a worthy recipient of this award but, until now, the Food Processing Awards team has been reluctant to entertain the idea for fear of any accusations of nepotism. This year, however, we finally gave in and the Lifetime Achievement award was presented to our very own Peter Whitfield! And, boy did we have a job to keep it fa secret from him.  

For many years Peter has enthusiastically set out to highlight the issues surrounding engineering skills in the food sector. Through the organisation of roundtables and events he has continued to argue that our industry needs to encourage bright young engineers to come and work in the sector.

Peter will be back, with the rest of the Appetite for Engineering team again next year to bring you a day of networking and learning about the importance of technology adoption combined with a continuing conversation about the need for top rate engineering skills to ensure the success of processing operations... once again the event will be followed by the Food Processing Awards, so watch this space for dates and information early in the New Year.


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