The dastardly practice of food downsizing dominated food industry news at the start of 2011, after a Consumer Reports expose on the topic. The report was a scathing one on the ways in which food companies are cutting costs by shrinking product packaging and shaving the volume. In truth, the product package downsizing practice does have a place in the food packaging industry outside of padding the pockets of food company CEO’s.
5 Reasons for Food Package Downsizing
1. Cost Cutting.
Yes, the cost of manufacturing goods affects a manufacturer’s decision to repackage a product or reduce the amount of food in the package. Food prices are not just the price of the ingredients inside the product, but also include workforce costs, freight, infrastructure, administrative costs, and marketing, along with a slew of fees, taxes and cost of retailer discounts that are required from the time the ingredients leave their source to the moment that you pluck it off the shelf. All of these costs must be recouped for each package of food sitting on store shelves.
When any of these costs rise, so must the shelf price. However, consumers are more apt to buy a cheaper product in face of a cost increase. To keep the consumer happy and the price as steady as possible, manufacturers redesign packages to fit the amount of food product that can be sold at the current price and still pay the costs the product has accrued.
For example, when the price of oranges increased, companies didn’t want to increase the price of the gallon of orange juice to match it. Orange juice drinkers would have switched to store brands or picked up the frozen concentrate. This would cause the company to lose even more money in lost sales. The powers that be within the orange juice company thus ordered manufacturers to cut the size of the package, lightening the bottle by a few ounces. The company can pay its costs and the consumer doesn’t pay any extra money for their morning o.j.
2. Jumping on the eco-friendly Manufacturing Engineer Ii Salary bandwagon.
Food packaging has always been the focus of companies looking to make the products and the manufacturing company more environmentally friendly. The efforts have resulted in package reductions throughout the manufacturing sector, including food production. In many cases, a package redesign that seems smaller may actually contain the same amount of product as before, or very close to that amount.
3. Fulfilling consumer demand.
Consumers are increasingly turning to products that are easier to carry, contain single serving sizes or those that are much smaller than the well known family size, and are easy to eat on-the-go. To compete in this growing market, food companies must downsize their products.
4. Beating the Classification Of Manufacturing Processes Competition.
Large retail chains also dictate the size and price of the product. In order to compete in these stores, the product price must match the quality of other items within that price bracket or …
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Rock Climbing Rope Manufacturing Process Explained
A modern kernmantle rock climbing rope is manufactured from very fine threads of polyamide: that’s nylon to you and me. Nylon is one of those long known polymer materials which even now is being rediscovered, reworked and processed anew to extend its properties and performance. Its use within the manufacture of climbing ropes for the rock, ice, mountain and climbing wall environments is an outstanding example of the way an old material has been taken beyond its original boundaries and limitations.
Manufacturers such as Mammut, Bluewater and Edelrid have refined their ranges of climbing rope products and treatments, to the point where the recreational market is highly competitive. That’s only half the story as enormous quantities of rope are now used in industrial access work and rescue services. Here we are sticking to dynamic climbing ropes.
Although most manufacturers will claim that there is something unique about their braiding process, my research seems to demonstrate that there isn’t a huge difference in the manufacturing techniques. The competitive edge comes from subtle variations in the programming of their braiding machines and the after treatments. A typical example is the Mammut process which is explained in outline on their website.
Mammut uses high quality Polyamide 6 (Nylon) for the production of its filaments, which run the whole 50 – 60m length of a typical rock climbing rope. In the first stage, between two and six filaments are spun together to make a strong yarn. Depending on the precise end use of the rope 4, 5 or 6 yarns are then combined in the next stage to produce a braid. Several braids are then combined to form the core of the rope. This part of the rope’s structure gives it the majority of its strength.
The braiding process gives the braids a crucial spiraling twisted structure, which also increases the rope’s elasticity, an incredibly important factor in protecting Traditional Industrial Sector a falling climber. Without elasticity, the fall would end too abruptly, generating an intolerable shock loading that breaks the rope – or the falling climber.
Additional elasticity is gained in the next stage, which involves the braids being coated and thermally shrunk. Mammut isn’t the only manufacturer to use a variation of both thermal and chemical treatments. It’s hard to find the exact details of what these treatments actually achieve; but the steadily reducing diameter and weight of UIAA approved indoor, mountain, ice and rock climbing ropes points to the fact that the treatment regimes are improving performance of the products. The chemical treatments seem to be water repellant and internal friction reducing, so that individual fibres are more equally loaded.
Finally the rope has its core covered by a sheath of (usually multi-coloured) threads. The colourful exteriors of ropes have become an important factor in these days of double and twin roped climbing styles. Many of us have had the “gibbers” from clipping the wrong rope into a piece of protection when we are strung out at the edge of our …