Artificial intelligence and data for the food industry: lower emissions and improved water efficiency

- Cutting emissions by up to 9.5% and improving water efficiency by more than 21% in food industry processes, also through the use of artificial intelligence systems. These are among the results of the European project CLARUS, coordinated by the Department of Management, Economics and Industrial Engineering at Politecnico di Milano and funded by the Horizon Europe programme.

The project, led by Roberto Rocca and Gabriella Monteleone, has developed a digital platform capable of monitoring and optimising resource use across the food value chain,  integrating artificial intelligence models, sustainability assessment tool based on the Green Deal Index (GDI), and an infrastructure for the secure sharing of data between companies and research centres. The Green Deal Index enables companies to measure their environmental performance through a set of sustainability indicators aligned with European Green Deal priorities, allowing organisations to track improvements over time and identify areas for optimisation.

The solutions developed within the project were tested in real industrial settings. At Ardo, a company active in primary food processing, the optimisation of refrigeration systems and improved process monitoring contributed to measurable improvements in sustainability indicators used in the GDI, including a reduction in CO₂-equivalent emissions of up to 9.5% and an improvement in water efficiency of 21.6%. In the case of the Finnish company Honkajoki, which specialises in the valorisation of food by-products, the use of AI has contributed to achieve improvements in logistics and process efficiency, reducing raw material transportation time by 8.3% and improving energy efficiency.

«The food industry is one of the most resource-intensive sectors and at the same time one of the most complex to transform», explains Marco Taisch, Professor at the Department of Management, Economics and Industrial Engineering at Politecnico di Milano. «With CLARUS, we have shown that integrating industrial data, artificial intelligence tools and sustainability assessment models can help companies make better-informed decisions, reducing consumption, emissions and waste across the production chain».

«One of the key aspects of the project is the ability to transform large volumes of industrial data into practical tools for both operational and strategic management», add Roberto Rocca and Gabriella Monteleone, researchers at the Department of Management, Economics and Industrial Engineering at Politecnico di Milano. «Through the integration of data spaces, artificial intelligence models and sustainability indicators, CLARUS makes it possible to continuously monitor and improve the environmental performance of production processes».

Thanks to its modular architecture and the use of open standards, the solutions developed can also be replicated in other resource-intensive industrial contexts, contributing to the digital and green transition of European manufacturing.

Project partners: Tampereen Korkeakoulusäätiö SR (Tampere University); Universitat Politècnica de València; Engineering – Ingegneria Informatica S.p.A.; IKERLAN S. Coop; Know-Center GmbH – Research Center for Data-Driven Business & Big Data Analytics; Expert.ai Lux S.A.R.L; Honkajoki Oy; Ardo Benimodo SL.