LEUVEN, BELGIUM — TOMRA Food announced May 20 it is now partnering with renderers who supply animal by-products to pet food processors to help them maximize their efficiency and minimize waste in animal food supply chains.

With a global pet food market worth an estimated $90 billion annually and the COVID-19 pandemic posing significant supply chain and production challenges, TOMRA hopes to improve processing efficiency and food safety with its product inspection and optical sorting solutions.

“We are proud to be working now not only with pet food producers, but also with the renderers,” said Lars Povlsen, sales manager for TOMRA Food’s pet food division. “TOMRA Food’s sophisticated sorting technologies can do much to help ensure that petfood ingredients are safe and nutritious. We expect to see more renderers investing in the latest sorting technologies in order to remain competitive.”

The company plans to work with renderers globally, meeting the unique needs within each country as food safety guidelines and regulations tend to differ between them. Its solutions will assist in the separation of meat and bone, feather removal from poultry products, and the detection of metal and other foreign objects, especially in applications where materials are ground to fine particle sizes, making these materials harder to detect.

The company’s modern sorting technologies can detect and automatically eject and alert operators if a foreign material is found, providing higher operational efficiency, food safety and reducing the risk of product waste.

TOMRA said its solutions will benefit renderers by allowing them to pre-determine the content of bone and protein meals for producing premium ingredients at higher price points, as demand for premium products continues to grow.

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