Food engineering systems in the next future: a compromise between sustainability and Industry 4.0

In the next years, Industrial Food Systems Engineering will face important changes. The 2030 Agenda established 17 Sustainable Development Goals to be reached until 2030, such as the fight against climate change, the greenhouse gas emissions reduction and oceans’ protection. Therefore, food and packaging companies will not only have to consider the consumers’ demand for healthy, organic, fresh and nutritious foods, but also they will be called to move from a linear economy to a circular economy, implementing solutions that can make their products and processes more sustainable from and economic, social and environmental point of view. In the meanwhile, the fourth industrial revolution is almost upon us: industries are becoming more and more automated, interconnected and intelligent, thanks to the use of new technologies, such as 3D printers, collaborative robots, virtual and augmented reality, big data analytics and cyber security. Consequently, food companies who want to be competitive on the market must reinvent themselves, implementing new methods and tools to make their plants efficient and productive. Based on these premises, this work aims to analyze how the food industrial sector will face changes related to the 2030 Agenda and Industry 4.0 issues. To achieve this goal, a literature analysis is carried out on a scientific database: recent studies are considered to describe innovative sustainable or 4.0 technological solutions, as well as the main benefits achievable with these improvements. Moreover, the article will focus on the combination of these issues in order to investigate a relationship between these changes. The final purpose is demonstrating if new 4.0 technologies can also reduce the environmental impacts of food products and machines, contributing to create a smarter, but sustainable, food industry.