The Midwest food processing industry convened in Wisconsin Dells for the MWFPA 2025 Annual Convention & Expo, and the message from the floor was clear: navigating this industry feels less like a smooth highway and more like a chaotic jungle.
With more than a thousand industry leaders in attendance, the conference themes, from food safety to public policy, all pointed to an accelerating pace of change. As one keynote speaker put it, processors must now deliver quality at lightning speed, all while meeting complex demands for time, health, safety, and experience that consumers prioritize.
Here are the critical insights and non-negotiable strategic imperatives that emerged from the key sessions.
1. Stopping the Revenue Leak: The "Growth Gap"
One of the takeaways was the concept of the "Growth Gap"—the internal friction that costs manufacturers an estimated 20% to 25% of potential annual revenue. This isn't about market failure; it's about organizational friction.
This loss happens when internal teams are siloed:
The Invisible Pipeline: Breakthroughs, like a clean-label dairy formulation with high annual revenue potential, often get buried in a lab spreadsheet for 18 months. If R&D isn't talking to Sales and Marketing, great ideas simply never get forecasted or prioritized for commercialization.
Disconnected Systems: Critical information is scattered across incompatible platforms (spreadsheets for R&D, one system for sales, another for marketing). This prevents leadership from seeing a unified commercial picture.
The Positioning Gap: Companies with world-class technical capabilities often use generic messaging like "We make dairy products." If marketing doesn't understand the innovation, sales can't sell the value proposition.
The Fix: Closing this gap requires establishing a formal Strategy-to-Execution architecture. Innovation teams must focus not just on technical feasibility but on commercial viability, ensuring that every new capability in the plant is immediately translated into a valuable message that the sales team can articulate to the customer.
2. HR Data: The Secret Weapon for Quality and Retention
The compliance track highlighted an immediate correlation between employee stability and food safety performance. Investing in modern, data-driven Employee Relationship Management (ERM) systems is no longer just an HR concern. It's a critical compliance asset.
A successful ERM system can track what leaders need most: the Core Four (Coaching, Recognition, Discipline, and Attendance). The results are staggering:
Massive Retention Gains: One company reduced employee turnover by an astonishing 71% over three years, resulting in an estimated labor cost savings of over $1.1 million annually. Stable teams mean fewer human errors, the known root cause of many allergen breaches and foreign material incidents.
Increased Productivity: Employees who received frequent, constructive communication (coaching 20 or more times) showed a 22.6% increase in productivity.
Audit Defense: The system helps managers instantly filter recognition logs by keywords like "food safety." This provides concrete, auditable evidence of a positive compliance culture during SQF or regulatory inspections. Coaching logs also capture "near-misses" (e.g., documenting that a supervisor corrected an employee who forgot their gloves), proving proactive control management.
3. The Regulatory Landscape: Facing EPR Challenges
Extended Producer Responsibility (EPR) for packaging dominated the regulatory track, presenting an unprecedented data management and compliance challenge.
No Harmony (Yet): Seven U.S. states have passed EPR, but the programs are unharmonized. This lack of consistency forces multi-state producers to deal with differences in scope and complexity.
Data Overload: While some states use around 60 material categories for reporting, California’s draft program requires tracking nearly 100 different covered material categories. The Producer Responsibility Organization (PRO) plans to consolidate all state reporting into a single submission deadline in May 2026.
The Plastic Mandate: Due to its economic size, California’s law sets the national strategy, requiring a 25% reduction in plastic packaging by 2032, a target that, as currently written, does not account for sales growth. This creates an existential engineering problem, forcing significant R&D spending to redesign packaging to be dramatically lighter while retaining the necessary tensile strength for logistics (like shrink wrap).
4. Innovation: The Sustainability Paradox
One session addressed the fundamental trade-off between consumer demand for sustainability and the core function of packaging: protection and shelf life.
Consumer Priorities: Data shows that while advocacy focuses on environmental claims, consumers overwhelmingly prioritize the Expiration Date on a package. Environmental claims like "recyclable" or "environmentally friendly" are consistently the least viewed elements.
The Trade-Off: The push for fully recyclable, mono-material packaging (like all-polypropylene retort pouches) inherently reduces product shelf life compared to traditional, high-barrier foil-based packaging.
A Dual-ROI Solution: New processing technology, such as Immersive Flow Retort, offers a way to manage this trade-off. This closed-loop system forces uniform water flow, dramatically cutting processing time—from an average of 28 minutes to approximately 6 minutes for densely packed loads. This rapid, uniform heating preserves quality and appearance while simultaneously reducing energy consumption, achieving dual ROI on sustainability and product quality.
5. Strategic Focus: Supplier Management, Compliance, and Risk Mitigation
Managing suppliers and external partners has never been more critical to protecting your brand's bottom line and liability.
Legal and Contractual Clarity
New agreements with co-manufacturers and private-label partners must now explicitly define who is responsible for providing the precise packaging weight and material data required for EPR compliance—and who pays the associated fees. Given the complexity of the EPR mandate, contractual ambiguity here is a major financial risk.
Going Beyond the CoA
The dramatic increase in recall severity and the emergence of novel hazards—like lead contamination in cinnamon or psychoactive compounds in snacks—means relying solely on a simple Certificate of Analysis (CoA) from a supplier is no longer sufficient.
Expand Risk Screening: Facilities must expand raw material risk assessments to screen for non-traditional contaminants and demand assurance on sourcing (e.g., geographical location) and transportation conditions.
Demand Audit Reports: Stop accepting score summaries. Manufacturers must enforce contractual obligations to receive complete supplier audit reports promptly. Without the full report, you cannot proactively correct known structural or cultural issues at a supplier's facility before they contaminate your finished product, effectively accepting massive liability.
Managing Internal Data Risks
Many facilities now use sophisticated systems (like ERP or quality management platforms) that generate vast amounts of operational and quality data. If this data is collected but not actively reviewed, trended, or acted upon—for instance, if consumer complaints are not regularly compared against maintenance records—it becomes a discoverable liability in litigation. Collecting data without using it can create an argument that the company "should have known" about a developing issue, severely escalating negligence risk.
Don't Wait on Traceability
Although the deadline for the complex Food Traceability Rule (FSMA 204) was extended to July 2028, manufacturers cannot afford to delay implementation. Mapping the Critical Tracking Events (CTEs) and Key Data Elements (KDEs) across a multi-tiered supply network is a long-term strategic project that requires continuous, dedicated planning now to avoid a scramble right before the compliance date.
