For processors, food safety has become a capital-budget priority. According to PMMI and FPSA's 2026 Processing State of the Industry report, FDA food and beverage recalls have climbed sharply to more than 240 in both 2024 and 2025.
Interviewees pointed to the digital environment as an amplifier: incidents that once stayed local can now circulate nationally within hours, raising reputational risk and intensifying scrutiny of food safety practices.
But the report is clear that the underlying drivers are operational. In 2025, undeclared allergens accounted for 41.5% of recalls, followed by listeria at 17.4% and salmonella at 13.8%.
These causes are closely tied to cross-contact control, residue removal, and execution consistency during sanitation cycles—problems concentrated in high-SKU, frequent-changeover categories such as prepared foods, fruits and vegetables, bakery and confectionery, and dairy. Because the same recall drivers persist year over year, the report characterizes sanitation challenges as structural rather than episodic.
That persistence is reshaping equipment design. To reduce reliance on operator precision, OEMs are engineering repeatability directly into machines: reducing part counts, simplifying assemblies, and improving access to product-contact surfaces.
Examples cited include tool-less belt removal, tilting hoppers, simplified clamps, and sloped surfaces designed to eliminate harborage points. Given high turnover and frequent use of temporary sanitation crews, durability during washdown has also become a priority, with OEMs improving electronics sealing, raising ingress protection ratings, and reinforcing enclosures to tolerate aggressive cleaning.
Sanitation demands are also running up against worker safety. As cleaning frequency rises, processors want cleanability improvements that don't increase safety exposure or downtime, driving demand for guards and access panels that stay attached during cleaning and washdown-rated safety hardware that remains functional under harsh conditions.
In some cases, sanitation limitations are directly triggering capital replacement. The report notes processors retiring legacy assets—older belt conveyors, painted frames, and hollow-frame designs—that can no longer meet modern cleanability expectations, sometimes because degrading coatings flaked into product. As regulatory scrutiny increases, these vulnerabilities are accelerating the shift toward stainless-steel, open-channel designs built to withstand aggressive washdown.
SOURCE: 2026 Processing State of the Industry
For more insights from PMMI's Business Intelligence team, find reports, including Processing State of the Industry, Innovation for Packaging and Processing OEMs, and From Complexity to Capability, at https://www.pmmi.org/business-intelligence.
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