On the Line Ep. 1: Peak Sauce & CIP Bottlenecks

Peak Sauce, CIP Bottlenecks, and the Pressure on Food & Beverage Factories

Welcome to On the Line with Laminar, our series where we go inside food and beverage factories to hear what's really happening on the production floor.

Sanjay Rajan, Head of Go-to-Market at Laminar, is joined by Cassie Orkin, Account Executive at Laminar with expertise in sauce manufacturing who has been touring F&B plants across the United States and soon internationally. Together they dig into the trends reshaping the industry — from SKU proliferation and CIP bottlenecks to water stress, rising chemical costs, and a shrinking pool of factory expertise.

Catch the video or check out the transcript below!

How SKU Proliferation Is Pushing Food and Beverage Factories to the Breaking Point

Sanjay: A recent article brought a chuckle to our faces — have we hit peak sauce? We've been seeing a ton of activity in the sauces, condiments, and syrups sector.

You and I went down to a very large sauce factory in California, and they talked about exactly this — SKU proliferation. They were running about 250 to 300 SKUs pre-COVID.  

With the consumer pattern change that's happened, they're now running 3,000. Do you hear a lot about CIP and changeovers? Is that where the pain is?

Cassie: Especially in the co-manufacturing space, there's not enough production time. The increased demand for different flavors, low-fat options, high-fat — it's creating so much complexity. Factories are going from a hundred SKUs to 500 different varieties, and that's not even factoring in different package sizes.

The factories we're working with are bursting at the seams. They're scheduled to the brim, and when sucrose is forgotten on an eight-hour production run, it throws the entire schedule off. Orders get delayed because they're running on such a tight margin.

On top of that — high chemical bills, high water usage, and too much time spent on downtime.

Why CIP Is Becoming the Biggest Production Bottleneck in Beverage and Sauce Manufacturing

Cassie: We were on a call last week where the customer said, we're becoming a CIP company, not a beverage company. People are so used to running CIP for three to five hours.  

Even though they're adding more SKUs, they're not changing what they're doing with CIP. It's quickly becoming a bottleneck for their fillers.

Once factories dig into root cause, CIP is one of the first things they can attack — downtime, water usage, chemical usage. It's low-hanging fruit.

Moving from Timer-Based CIP to Self-Driving, Sensor-Driven Cleaning Processes

Sanjay: I've always found manufacturing resistant to being the first — or even a fast follower — on new technology. What we offer is high-powered sensors, AI, and software. Where is this willingness to adopt coming from?

Cassie: There's a natural hesitation to change. When I'm baking at home, I'm used to a timer — 12 minutes for cookies. Switching to a dynamic process is a mental shift.

But when people see the savings, the hesitation disappears. When they're in a water-constrained region and the bill is increasing fast — or halfway through the month they can't operate because they've run out of water — that changes the conversation. When there's a contamination issue and they need to catch it early, that changes the conversation.

The best analogy is switching from manually driving a car to self-driving. Optimizing the process based on what's actually happening — not being reactive when a sample gets to quality and there's no sugar in it.  

Being proactive, based on what's going on in your system, integrated with your PLC, and chemical-science based. It's a no-brainer.

The Manufacturing Labor Gap: Fewer Experts, More Complexity, and the Burnt Sugar Story

Sanjay: When I was selling MES systems, there was always a fear of loss of control from experts on the floor. Software scared them. But now there are fewer of those experts, and leadership is more open to solutions that can self-drive certain processes. Are you seeing that shift?

Cassie: Absolutely. We walked into a factory and the guy giving us the tour suddenly smelled sugar — knew exactly where to go. We were like, doesn't the whole place smell like that? He asked us, don't you smell it? We didn't smell anything different. He'd caught burnt sugar and went and fixed something. That's a deeply learned, almost visceral kind of expertise.

Those people have incredible wisdom. But the manufacturing landscape from a labor perspective is changing. There's a gap, especially in the US.

The younger generation is used to digital platforms, self-driving cars — adoption will be easier. But you still need those people who can smell burning sugar a mile away. You need to bake that expertise into your processes.

Water Stress, Rising Chemical Costs, and How Regional Pressures Shape F&B Manufacturing

Sanjay: You've gone across food and beverage quite a bit now. Do you see different patterns by industry or region?

Cassie: The breakdown is more regional than industry-specific. We're in South Africa, Australia, India — each area has different nuances around water stress, chemical costs, energy costs. Every factory is different based on where it is and what it makes.

One brewery I'm working with is out of the Colorado basin — they need to reduce water yesterday.

Other global beer manufacturers are seeing strain on chemical usage — underwashing events, or overdosing significantly. That shows up fast on a chemical bill.

With sauce and co-manufacturers, it's about time. They need CIP to be shorter so they can get production capacity back.

Sanjay: The beverage manufacturers here in Tampa told us they're seeing double-digit percentage rises in chemical costs every year.

How Reducing CIP Downtime Unlocks Production Capacity, Training Time, and Factory Agility

Cassie: I had a conversation with someone yesterday who said, getting time back on my downtime gives me options. I can produce more. We can do more trainings. We can do more maintenance. We just have more breathing room.

Sanjay: When you talk about an agile or lean factory, it starts with — do you have line availability? Do you have time for innovative projects? When you're spending 80% of your time sustaining what you have, you don't have a chance to improve.

SKU Growth, Rising Costs, and the Case for Smarter CIP in Food and Beverage

Sanjay: The SKU proliferation, the consumption pattern change, the loss of experts — these are new things manufacturers are facing. Water is more stressed. Chemicals are going up. And this is a shout out to everybody thinking about technology solutions for manufacturing: there is fast adoption. That's a big change from my experience.

What's Next?

That wraps up the first episode of On The Line with Laminar.

To see how Laminar's real-time inline sensors and AI-driven CIP optimization work in practice, explore our customer stories or talk to the team.

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