SWITZERLAND – Uzwil based technology company has in partnership with Microsoft launched MoisturePro at Microsoft’s annual Ignite Conference, a cloud based framework for digital services in the food and feed processing industry.

Powered by Bühler Insights platform, the digital service can reduce energy consumption for industrial drying processes, thus checking on the customers’ energy costs as well as the environmental footprint of thermal processing.

Buhler Insights runs all of Buhler’s digital services where customers can get access to, contributing to the world’s supply chain and food safety.

Bühler currently has the capability to connect more than 85% of its solutions to Bühler Insights.

“Microsoft’s technology has made it possible to accelerate time to market and has allowed us to deliver real benefits and value to our customers,” said Stuart Bashford, Digital Officer at Bühler.

“For manufacturers, that means reaching new levels of productivity.

With the Bühler Insights, every machine in your plant can run as if your best operator is on the job around the clock.”

Buhler said the digital service can deliver a return on investment of US$300,000, translating to an annual energy savings of US$20,000.

Another of its services include LumoVision, which can identify and remove corn (maize) that has been contaminated with toxic aflatoxin.

Two additional image-processing Bühler Insights solutions are, GrainiGo for corn and TotalSense for rice.

These solutions enable customers to assess raw material quality and trends, compare performance objectively and consistently, and store data for future analysis and traceability.

According to Bashford, applying blockchain in the food industry could help reduce contamination and increase awareness.

“These problems in the food chain have been with us for some time. But now we have the technology to solve them.

This way we can introduce standards worldwide and make it easier to trace contamination, cut down food waste and make it a lot harder for food fraud to happen,” he said.

Bühler said its goal is to build sustainable food value chains, reduce 30% of waste and 30% of energy in the processes of their customers by 2020.