Food & Beverages
Infrastructure that stands up to washdown.
Food and beverage production combines washdown cleaning, temperature extremes and continuous operation: conditions most network hardware was never specified for.
What makes it hard
The challenges we are asked to remove.
- Washdown regimes and hygiene rules that standard IT hardware cannot survive
- Chilled and frozen areas that affect wireless propagation and equipment ratings
- Process control and corporate systems sharing infrastructure without segregation
- Traceability and recall obligations dependent on continuous data capture
- Short maintenance windows within continuous production
Diagram showing food and beverage production technology as connected layers: process and packaging line interfaces, hygiene-zone-appropriate infrastructure, industrial networking and segmentation, cold-chain and environmental monitoring, CCTV, access control and traceability support, all supported by managed operations.
Sector context
What makes food and beverage technology different
Food safety obligations rest on the food business operator, and electronic systems now sit inside them. Regulation (EC) No 852/2004, which continues to apply in UK law, requires operators to maintain permanent procedures based on HACCP principles, including monitoring at critical control points and records that demonstrate the measures are working. Article 18 of Regulation (EC) No 178/2002 requires an operator to identify its suppliers and the businesses it has supplied. Where that monitoring is electronic, an outage leaves a period the records cannot account for, which makes affected production harder to bound to a narrow batch range.
Production areas are cleaned with hot water at pressure and with strongly alkaline or acidic detergents. Enclosure and gland selection therefore has two parts: an ingress rating under the IP code in BS EN 60529, which addresses dust and water only, and a material that survives the cleaning chemicals in use. Equipment above open product also falls under site foreign body controls, which determine fixing methods and whether glass or brittle plastic is permitted at all. Where high-care boundaries apply, movement of tools and people between zones is restricted, constraining cable routes and the hours in which installation work can proceed.
Relevant capabilities
How we respond.
IP-rated and hygienic-area network infrastructure
OT and IT segmentation for process control
Temperature and cold-chain monitoring integration
Wireless coverage for scanning and production areas
CCTV, access control and site security systems
Certifications, framework positions and sector references are stated only once verified. Relevant evidence is shared during qualification, subject to confidentiality.
Next step
Bring the complete environment into one conversation.
Tell us what you are planning, replacing, integrating or trying to stabilise. We will help define the right next step.