Report Highlights
This report provides:
- Identification of the top 10 companies in the market for food safety products and technology, and the rationale behind these selections.
- Factors taken into account, including technical innovation, market leadership, and commitment to this market via investment in products.
Report Scope
Introduction
The world’s population has crossed the 7 billion mark. Providing food for such a large population is a significantly important business endeavor. It is imperative that agriculture and animal rearing that contribute to the world’s food needs are also taken up in a large scale. Apart from food production, the procurement, processing, packaging, logistics, distribution, delivery and final usage have all seen the impact of technology over the years. One important aspect all along the chain from production to consumption is the need to guarantee the quality of food.
There is only one food item that is known to man that is not perishable, and it is honey. This is because it is already digested by the bee. Since humankind cannot survive on honey alone, the monitoring of all other food items, which are perishable with time, command high importance. It is estimated that in developing countries, only 50% of food that is produced is finally consumed, the rest perishing at various stages of the distribution. In developed countries, this is significantly less but still in double digits for various food items.
Automation of food production and distribution has also allowed industry growth in automated food testing for quality. Such automated testing is typically first developed for use by large-scale food producers and distributors and later the methods are also adopted by smaller scale users. Some of the tests are fairly common and straightforward, but even some technologically advanced test methods such as liquid chromatography and DNA testing are also used routinely to monitor food quality.
This report is an effort to bring clarity into this growing field by providing an in-depth analysis of the top 10 companies in the field of food quality testing.
Study Goal and Objectives
This document is a specialty report related to the BCC Research report “Global Markets and Technologies for Food Safety Testing,” report number FOD011G authored by Kevin Gainer in August 2012. That report provided a global review of the food quality testing industry with trends, regulatory aspects and other macrolevel factors. In that report, numerous companies are listed in brief, with each company’s region of operation and products listed.
The goal of this document is to provide a more in-depth look at the top 10 companies in the industry and to take a closer look at how the products from these companies are addressed in the market, thus providing an explorative financial and technical review to the readers.
The objectives include identifying companies that are considered the leaders and what technologies or management contributions make them leaders. There are certain market drivers and some constraints to both the companies and to the evolving technology they seek to dominate. There is a desire to ascertain whether these companies will be able to meet the continuing demand for their products by proprietary technology, strategy alliances, superior marketing or other sought-after advantages.
Most of the information presented in this report is based on that available from annual reports, various regulatory filings, the company website, U.S. Patent and Trademark Office, and other public sources and the author hereby acknowledges the same. Additional information was sourced from industry experts and people with close understanding of the industry dynamics.
Scope
The scope of this report is a detailed analysis of the top 10 companies in the food testing technology sector. This is in many ways a selected due diligence of the key companies and drivers in the food testing marketplace. This is not a list of top 10 companies by revenues, profits or other financial criteria alone. Instead, the focus has been to pick out companies that are most influential in the field, and this is based on a combination of several factors, including size, established technologies, historical aspects, business relationships, intellectual properties, impact of regulations and the global food marketplace as such. In short, the companies selected in this report are those that can be considered as trendsetters in the field of food safety testing. Hence, a detailed review of these companies also provides a deeper look into the sector dynamics. A second list of companies that are important in the field apart from the top 10 is also provided.