Opportunities Galore For Innovation In Food-Grade Lubricants
By Isaac Fletcher, contributing writer, Food Online
With machinery and automation becoming ever more important to the food processing industry, the need for highly customized, high-performance food-grade lubricants is greater than ever
The Food Safety Modernization Act (FMSA) and other safety and environmental regulations and legislation, coupled with technological advancement and proliferation, provide opportunities for industrial grease manufacturers to create greases that deliver high performance while still adhering to the necessary safety and hygienic standards. When it comes to choosing the proper lubricant, and still meeting standards for cleanliness, contamination, and quality, food processors face a particularly difficult task. Machinery not only needs to function properly, the right lubricant must be chosen for the particular task at hand.
A recent report from Frost & Sullivan, Analysis of Industrial Greases Market and Opportunities Bio-based Materials, has identified opportunities in the market for industrial greases. The fast-paced growth of technology has resulted in an increased need for high-performance industrial greases. With a rapidly changing industry landscape caused by legislation, regulation, and technological advancement, manufacturers of industrial greases, especially those that are synthetic or semisynthetic, are working to meet evolving customer requirements.
The industrial greases market earned revenues of $1.22 billion in 2013 and is estimated to reach $1.82 billion in 2019. The food processing industry accounts for a sizeable segment of the market, along with automotive, pulp and paper, aerospace, mining, and power generation industries. Technological improvements in industrial greases will likely attract other industry sectors as well.
Cooperation between grease designers, manufacturers, and end users will yield highly customized grease systems, which will create opportunities for market applications in a wider range of industries. Research will also likely lead to changes in base-oil types used in producing industrial greases, which will yield formulation changes that will be beneficial to some additive families like anti-wear (AW) or rust and oxidation inhibitors (RO).
Like other industrial greases, food-grade lubricants must meet the needs of proper lubrication: provide protection against wear, friction, corrosion, oxidation, dissipate heat, transfer power, and be compatible with rubber and other sealing materials. However, food-grade lubricants must also withstand a wide range of contamination issues such as those that are caused by sugars, dust, chemicals, etc. that are a byproduct of the manufacturing process.
To avoid potential hazard in the event of leakage, food-grade lubricants need to be tasteless, odorless, and physiologically inert. Lastly, these lubricants must also withstand and deter the growth of fungi and bacteria, which is very common in wet environments such as meat processing plants.
There are currently three food-grade lubricant classifications.
- H1 lubricants are those used in food processing environments where there is the possibility of incidental food contact.
- H2 lubricants are used on equipment and machinery in locations where there is no possibility of food contact.
- H3 lubricants are typically edible oils and are used to prevent rust on hooks, trolleys, and other similar equipment.
Determining the likelihood of contact can be difficult; so many food processors err on the side of caution with respect to the selection of H1 over H2. As automation and machinery become ever more prevalent in food processing, so too will the need for suitable food-grade lubricants that deliver in all the necessary areas.
Safety will continue to be a top concern, but manufacturers must also be aware of performance and how certain industrial lubricants will affect their processes and ultimately their bottom line. The need for specific, hygienic, high-performance lubricants will continue to grow as the needs and machinery of food manufacturers becomes more varied and complex. This growing need opens up great opportunity for food-grade lubricant manufacturers to engineer new and innovative solutions to change the way the industry thinks about industrial greases.