Food Processing
The Food Manufacturing market is made up of businesses that manufacture or process food products and beverages for human consumption.1 Chewing gum, manufactured ice, and processed foods for livestock are also included in this sector.2 Nationally, there are over 10,000 food processing facilities.5 Large facilities are grouped by state in the map below.


More than 200 sites use CHP.5 Combined, they generate more than 6 GW of capacity.5 In the Gulf Coast CHP region (Louisiana, Oklahoma, and Texas), this market is represented by fruit and vegetable canneries, flour, rice, and sugarcane mills, sugar refineries, and beet sugar manufacturers.3 (For more on CHP capacity and sites, see Current Status).

For a more detailed industry overview, see the USDA's The US Food Marketing System, 2002.

Additional information is available about the:

• Current Status
• Future Potential
• Benefits, Challenges & Solutions

The Food manufacturing market is highly diversified and each subsector has specific issues of its own. What can be said is that the Food Processing market as a whole takes food safety very seriously.4 Energy dedicated to cooling, freezing, dehydration, debacterisation, pre-cooking, among others is a major element of the food processing work flow. Safe packaging, as well as safe food preparation is energy intensive.4

From a business standpoint, the industry is continuing to downsize and consolidate. This results in fewer companies controlling a larger market share, so most food manufacturers have seen the total number of individual sites decline. New plants in the U. S. tend to manufacture products that are highly processed and packaged,2 because for these products, material costs are low relative to sales price. From the global perspective, sectors of the US Food market are expanding into overseas markets while foreign ownership is increasing here at home.2

Domestic and international competition is driving companies to improve energy and process efficiency, and to minimize costs. As a result, facilities are becoming more industrialized. And there is increasing coordination among food marketing stages, e.g. farmer to food manufacturer to food wholesaler to retail food store.

Important energy issues for this market are: to control or reduce costs, increase efficiency, and enhance power reliability and quality.

Typically, this market has:

• Large annual operating hours (6200 - 8700)5
• Large coincident electricity/thermal loads
• Substantial process heating/dehydration and process cooling/refrigeration demands.4
• Natural gas-fired systems, but electricity, oil, and waste are also used. The industry is trending away from steam towards electricity4,5
• System sizes less than 20 MW.5 However, most of the capacity is concentrated in a few sites with larger (>50 MW) systems.
• Annual operating budgets with substantial energy expenditures.

These factors make CHP attractive. Nationally, the Food Manufacturing Market ranks fourth in CHP capacity behind the Refining, Paper and Chemicals industries. But it ranks third in Future CHP potential.6 (For more on these topics go to Current Status and Future Potential.)

For a diagrammatic summary of this industry's energy use and loss, see the U.S. Department of Energy's Food and Beverage Energy Footprint.

CHP systems provide energy cost savings, income through sales of excess capacity, increased energy efficiencies, decreased maintenance costs, flexible fuel options, and decreased demand on the power grid. CHP also improved energy reliability and offered the option for "island-mode" power generation.

Issues included spotty start-up reliability, and interconnection and incentive delays with the utilities.


For additional case studies, visit Distributed Energy Case Study Database supported by the United States Department of Energy. Cases may be searched by market sector, site name, state, power size range, prime mover, fuel type and thermal energy use.

For a more detailed perspective, be sure to check out CHP in the Food and Beverage Manufacturing Industry. This site provides information on benefits, potential, markets, industry drivers, economic feasibility, regional incentives, emerging technologies and industry leaders.