Food Industry in the Year 2000 (Presented at the Workshop on Size and Productive Efficiency: The Wider Implications, IIASA, 25-29 June 1979)

Een, G. (1980). Food Industry in the Year 2000 (Presented at the Workshop on Size and Productive Efficiency: The Wider Implications, IIASA, 25-29 June 1979). IIASA Collaborative Paper. IIASA, Laxenburg, Austria: CP-80-016

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Abstract

The following study was carried out in Alfa-Laval in Sweden and was intended primarily for internal use. The purpose was to provide some guidance for our technical and marketing development activities.

Alfa-Laval is a supplier of capital goods to the food industry. We do not operate any food plants, but the food industry is our most important market, and we have every reason to follow very closely developments in this industry.

In the near past and especially after the Second World War we have seen a pronounced centralization of production capacity in many food industries. Potato starch, beer brewing and milk processing can serve as examples. It is obvious, however, that a simple trend extrapolation leads to forecasts which are improbable or even absurd, for example, a single milk processing plant for all of Europe.

There are also problems in further scaling-up of certain types of equipment which we produce in house. In some cases we have reached the size limit of technologies which have served us well so far. Furthermore the trend towards a smaller number of larger units is causing a diseconomy of scale in our own development and production.

This study has been carried out without any sophisticated methodology. I have simply collected facts and view points in a computerized system for storage and retrieval of information. The material is not only from the traditional fields of technology and economy, but also from fields outside my professional training. Without any formalized procedure the material was used to form a simple scenario which I shall present here followed by a number of factors which defend this scenario.

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