Innovation

As a megatrend in the food processing industry, automation is key to Marel’s innovation efforts. Through the development of automation, robotization and digitalization, Marel helps food processors create opportunities to improve food safety, sustainability, efficient resource use and animal wellbeing. These cutting-edge technologies also reduce dependence on manual labor and make processing lines more flexible.

In 2022, we are proud to have transitioned from extensive planning to live implementation in our digital journey. We made solid progress on our roadmaps for the next connectivity products across all industries, for example with our SmartBase cloud solution.

We also continued our digital journey by developing new service products and digitally connected solutions in our current installed base, such as the SmartBase-enabled ModularOven. These efforts have positioned Marel at the forefront of the food processing industry, taking advantage of the latest advancements in automation and Industry 4.0.

In recent years, Marel has worked closely with current and potential customers to initiate several product development programs specifically addressing innovative line concept solutions. In 2022, we introduced the Beef Steak Line to market at IFFA, which was a major milestone in taking our line solutions to the next level. The Beef Steak Line is just one of many solutions that address ease of integration, standardization and modularization, all of which improve costs and lead time to market.

To maintain Marel’s leadership in advanced technology offerings, the core team of the Automation Center is responsible for investigating, integrating and maintaining new technology. Additionally, the team is responsible for fostering a knowledge-sharing community by hosting expert forums, presentations and company-wide information sharing that is released bi-annually.

The center’s core team develops and maintains platforms for AI and computer vision, which focuses on enabling machines to interpret and understand the visual world. A common platform ensures faster innovation, a higher quality and scalable solution, and improved ways of working. The platform provides common building blocks for all development teams that seek to implement computer vision and/or AI into their solutions.

With emerging technology and new channels such as e-commerce, the industry is trending toward a customer-pull-driven value chain, where the end-consumer creates the food processing requirements.

Based on our engagement with customers, we have identified a clear need and demand for advanced interlinked secondary processing steps in the value chain. We aim to simplify our offering of line solutions, accelerate key integration developments and fully utilize automation opportunities to achieve this goal.

To further enhance our customers’ experience, we are prioritizing the development of global standards for mechanical, electrical and digital environments throughout Marel. We are also creating integrated and connected line solutions for our customers. By doing this, we will be able to deliver fully flexible and modular sub-systems and end-to-end line solutions, as illustrated below.

Enabling our customers to be connected creates added value and serves as an additional incentive to view Marel as a one-stop shop for aftermarket services, trusted maintenance partnerships, and digital connectivity in service.

A conceptual example of future line flexibility

Marel has developed the Sustainability Scorecard 2.0 to make sustainability a permanent criterion for evaluating all new product developments (NPDs) at every stage of our development process. The scorecard, updated from the previous Sustainability Scorecard, helps our innovation team focus on improving sustainability in the food value chain, ensuring that all Marel innovations align with our goals in this area. In 2022, all new innovation projects approved for further development were rated using the scorecard, maintaining our 100% rating from 2021.

In 2022, we made progress in utilizing extended reality (XR) and other simulations to improve our sustainability impact. Our engineering innovations have reduced waste of raw materials in the prototyping phase by increasing the use of virtual prototyping. Additionally, we have reduced the need for shipping equipment to exhibitions by using 3D real-time immersive technology to showcase our innovations. This technology is shown in action in the video below.