In this interview, Marius Czech, our food market manager, explains how specialty lubricants handle the challenges of griddles, fryers and other snack and bakery operations.
In this interview, Toby Porter looks at how today’s food-grade (NSF H1) lubricants are fitting into food-processing applications.
Lubricants typically make up only about 1% of the average company’s total operating costs. But this relatively small amount can earn a tremendous return for your company’s bottom line. The surprising truth is that the lubricants a company chooses can have a significant impact on high-visibility and high-value line items such as energy, labor and equipment costs.
Because safety and productivity are both critical to the food-and-beverage processing industry, it’s important to eliminate two common misconceptions.
Look inside the lubricant cabinet of food, beverage or pharmaceutical plant and it’s surprising what you find. Upon close inspection, you’ll see the cabinet isn’t holding only food-grade (NSF H1) lubricants. The cabinet may also contain cleaners, glue removers and penetrating sprays, which often turn out to be just industrial chemicals and/or degreasers.
When it comes to enhancements in food safety from a lubricant perspective, previously unknown terms such as NSF H1 and CFIA have become commonplace. Now, food industry professionals have a myriad of options when choosing products that help achieve targeted levels of food safety for their facility.
Today, there’s a growing hunger for safer, purer foods, and it’s showing up in three areas: FDA rules, the popularity of foods that meet faith-based purity rules and industry initiatives requiring traceability for suppliers.
In general, food-grade lubricants perform typical lubricant functions: reducing wear, friction, corrosion, oxidation and heat build-up. In addition, they must resist microbial growth and degradation from food ingredients, chemicals and water/steam, while being odourless, tasteless and chemically inert.
Food-grade, food-plant, NSF certified, FDA listed, USDA registered—the list of lubricant terms seems to go on and on. Trying to sift through the terminology, standards and best practices for properly lubricating machines can be overwhelming for facility managers.
Like the pre-existing NSF H1, H2 and H3 designations, ISO 21469 is all about trying to ensure that consumers are protected from the deleterious effects of contaminating food and food-related products with the lubricant.
One way in which mineral oils can enter the food chain is the production process and the process aids used in the process, including the lubricants used in the production of food and food packaging.
H1 is the leading lubricant category and because of its standing in the industry, the voluntary standard ISO 21469, Safety of machinery — Lubricants with incidental product contact — Hygiene requirements was published in 2006 by the International Organization for Standardization to require hygienic standards for the formulation of the lubricants used in specialized industries such as food, pharmaceutical, cosmetics and animal feed manufacturing.
When it comes to quality, unfortunately not all industries are as stringent and particular about their lubrication and the products they are using. Look inside the lubricant cabinet of food, beverage or pharmaceutical plant and you may be surprised at what you find.
Asst. Manager - Business Support
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