Blendhub India will be opening its second hub or production center in Chennai to support CloudBlending, a business model that boosts an end-to-end supply chain system and offers food powder blends worldwide at the best price.
Cloudblending is supported by a global network of hubs connected in the cloud and a worldwide community of thousands of agri-food professionals.
It helps food businesses solve manufacturing challenges such as product development, personalization, adaptation to new niches, logistics optimization, production peaks, and formulation.
This pay-per-use model does not require any initial or operational investment.
Food News International finds out more from company’s director Ravi Menon.
FNI: What does CloudBlending aim to achieve?
Menon: In the coming years, we will have 40 hubs producing food powder blends for different brands all around the globe.
Our aim is to use our network of hubs to increase access to food by producing locally where the demand and the raw materials are and by reducing waste and optimising costs. Cloudblending produces food efficiently and so reduce its price for the final consumer.
We want to implement our model collaboratively because it is inclusive and helps food brands to position themselves globally, grow and solve concrete challenges such as production peaks, product customization and implementing new ideas.
Also, we gather the know-how of food technologists and product designers globally in our community, which supports our hubs and help feed more people in more places.
We use CloudBlending to facilitator and generate new opportunities for companies to enter new markets and launch new products.
FNI: What are the possible challenges to using CloudBlending?
Menon: There are no challenges.
CloudBlending is an inclusive model where we invite as many people to join in.
It is a flexible solution aimed at meeting individual needs.
Additionally, we relieve food companies of avoidable costs and initial investments when entering new markets or launching new products.
We want to help them to collaborate easily.
FNI: How is this disruptive to traditional ways of selling food powder blends?
Menon: Cloudblending is a service for food powder blends, instead of as a product delivered in bags or sachets.
We have different pay-per-use offerings so our clients can use what they need.
Cloudblending offers them support beyond buying a formulation in the form of a recipe or a powdered product.
We can support brands by searching for and purchasing raw materials.
We also use big data and our BlendApp system to find the best location to produce products at the best price.
FNI: How are quality and food safety ensured for users and regulators?
Menon: All our hubs are connected to the cloud and produce with the same high quality standards.
Automated processes ensure traceability and food safety during production with certifications such as ISO 22000, ISO 14001, ISO 9001 and FSSC 22000.
Besides, we use near-infrared or NIR-based quality control system to analyze the final products and raw materials.
During the past years, we have also built a library with 10,000 samples of over 300 different raw materials that we host on the cloud to compare samples from any part of the world.
