Bluenote's contributor Briar McCormack takes a look at  'that worldly beer from Kingsland,' Auckland. That’s the concept behind Urbanaut Brewing Company - and it’s one hitting the mark with craft-beer enthusiasts. When directors Thomas Rowe, Simon Watson and Bruce Turner embarked on their craft-beer dream they wanted to celebrate big cities around the world and use them as inspiration for the beers they brewed. “We started with Kingsland Pilsner as our flagship beer, next came Brixton Pale Ale - paying homage to the home of pale ale,” says head brewer Turner. " “[Craft beer] will continue to see growth but…

One of New Zealand’s fastest rising consumer production companies, The Pure Food Co, is about to take off as it has opened a massive new manufacturing facility in Auckland. The Pure Food Co, rated one of the rising stars in the latest Deloitte Fast 50 Index, had taken control of its business by ramping up opportunities after building their own production plant in Mt Wellington. Pure Food founders Sam Bridgewater and Maia Royal have spent the last three years growing their food business at Auckland’s food innovation incubator The FoodBowl. They had reached the point where they had enough investment…

Minister for Food Safety David Bennett met with Dr Penny Lukito, the chairwoman of Indonesia’s National Agency of Drug and Food Control (BPOM) this morning. BPOM is one of Indonesia’s five main regulators for food safety, animal health, and plant health. It is responsible for the regulation and product safety testing of all processed foods, both domestic and imported. “Meetings like this are important to ensuring that both agencies are aware of the goals each are working towards within their country’s food safety systems, a key tool underpinning agricultural trade,” Mr Bennett says. BPOM and Ministry for Primary Industries signed…

The Australian Food and Grocery Council (AFGC) today launched ePIF™, the first element under the AFGC Authorised Food Data System® initiative that is harnessing digital disruption to empower companies to better source and manage information on their products. AFGC CEO Ms Tanya Barden said that ePIF™ provides a technological asset for industry to meet the increasing costs of operating in a highly regulated industry by enabling companies to track product information across its entire value chain. “AFGC’s ePIF™ is a tool developed by the $126 billion food industry in Australia and New Zealand to obtain and share information needed to…

Goodman Fielder plans to close two factories in Auckland, consolidating their production to a single site and shifting its pie-making operation to Palmerston North as part of an ongoing efficiency drive in what it calls "a very competitive market". The diversified manufacturer owned by Singapore-based Wilmar International and Hong Kong-listed investment firm First Pacific Co will close its Irvines bakery at Wiri and its Hot Plate bakery in East Tamaki. The Irvines line will relocate to Palmerston North while production at Hot Plate will be consolidated to Goodman's larger Quality Bakers Auckland facility. Some 147 workers are affected by the…

Food sector magazine, Foodprocessing out of Australia report that post-harvest fresh and processed handling solutions company Wyma Solutions has announced a formal strategic partnership with North American supplier of fresh produce packaging and equipment automation solutions Volm Companies. The partnership will allow the companies to work in a closely integrated manner resulting in turnkey solutions that leverage the global experience of both organisations. Both companies will be adding significant sales, engineering, technical service and manufacturing resources and select Wyma products will be manufactured for the North American market. Continue to the full article here  . . .  ||  June 1,…

Scientists have used some surprising and ingenious methods to get Greenshell™ mussels to breed in captivity and their efforts could soon be worth $200 million a year to the New Zealand economy. Warm baths and vibrating devices are just two of the clever tricks New Zealand scientists have employed to get the famous (and somewhat shy) Greenshell™ mussels to breed on cue.  The first crop from the SPATNZ hatchery is now ready to harvest and to eat, after years of investigative work in Nelson, New Zealand. Scientist and SPATNZ boss, Rodney Roberts says it’s taken quite a bit of experimenting…

Mettler Toledo is inviting New Zealand manufacturers to a one-day event at its newly established Centre of Excellence in Hamilton on March 29. The free event will include a range of workshops covering key industry topics such as foreign object detection, food safety and compliance, and hazardous area weighing. Centre experts will also provide hands-on product demonstrations, guides on good analytical practice, and a new approach to pH measurement. The workshops are designed for food and beverage, pharmaceutical, and chemical producers interested in improving contamination detection, analysis of pH, conductivity and dissolved oxygen, and hazardous area weighing processes. “This one-time…

VIRGIN coconut oil (VCO) produced in Fiji and the Pacific has been tested as one of the top quality oils in the world. After the opening of the new VCO factory at the Savusavu Copra Millers Ltd last Friday, a New Zealand company known as COCAVO had shown interest in purchasing VCO oil from the factory. In an interview the company's chief operating officer Roger MacDonald said the company purchased four tonnes of VCO from producers around the country on a monthly basis. Mr MacDonald said VCO was a very able product that Fiji could focus on rather than getting…

3M Food Safety has responded to the needs of the food safety industry with its latest luminometer, now available in Australia and New Zealand and offering greater sensitivity, more powerful and intuitive software, wireless connectivity and a rugged, user-friendly ergonomic industrial design. Advances with the company’s latest Clean-Trace Hygiene Monitoring and Management System include the use of photomultiplier technology to amplify any luminescence and boost the likelihood of detection. This is an important element in the luminometer’s re-engineering, and applies techniques used in cutting-edge medical devices, medical imaging and aerospace engineering. The second area of improvement is the system’s upgraded…

Most of the smart factory discussion has centred around discrete manufacturing, but modern smart sensing technologies can also be applied to improve many aspects of the food and beverage industry, particularly for food safety and track and trace, improved packaging and new product opportunities. The concepts of Industry 4.0, IIoT and ‘smart manufacturing’ have been gaining much press in recent times, particularly in relation to discrete manufacturing. Those working in an industry such as food and beverage — overwhelmingly driven by batch manufacturing processes — may find it difficult to see how such technologies could assist and improve their business.…