Healthier snacks are booming, but is your snack production line keeping up?
The better-for-you snack market reached $100.95 billion in 2024 and is projected to grow 6.2% annually through 2030, according to an analysis by Grand View Research. Consumers want snacks that are nutritious, clean and convenient and major food brands are racing to deliver. But behind the scenes, snack food manufacturers face a maze of production challenges — from handling complex ingredients to maintaining quality and safety at scale.
As snack makers expand their portfolios, they’re experimenting with new flavors, functional ingredients and reformulations — all of which are reshaping production lines. High-protein, high-fiber options with less sugar and artificial additives are in demand, while plant-based ingredients, superfoods and probiotics continue to grow in popularity. Many snacks now double as meal replacements, adding another layer of complexity to production, according to market research firm SkyQuest Technology.
Keeping up with these shifts isn’t just about scaling up; it’s about smart, strategic automation on your production line. The right technology ensures manufacturers can handle complex ingredients and evolving formulations, while maintaining quality and consistency in every batch.
Challenges in Scaling Snack Production
Manufacturers that thrive are those ready to meet the process control challenges of better-for-you snack production. Here are some of the most common issues you might face in the quest to deliver great snacks of the highest quality.
- While classic snacks like potato chips might use a few staple ingredients, better-for-you snacks have everything from nut powders and ancient grains to fruit bits and plant proteins. All of these have different densities, moisture content and clumping tendencies, which can complicate mixing and batching.
- Whether they’re making healthier chips, expanded snacks or crackers, manufacturers need handling systems that accommodate each ingredient’s attributes. Micro ingredient dosing of probiotics and natural sweeteners needs to be super precise to ensure the finished product meets nutritional label claims and taste profiles. This is especially important when scaling up production.
- Sugar substitutes have a finer particle size and are highly combustible. All equipment should be designed to meet strict safety standards such as NFPA to ensure equipment can contain and manage high volumes of dust as snacks are produced.
- Health-focused snacks often include nut, dairy-free and gluten-free ingredients, making it critical that production lines manage allergen segregation. Co-packers and snack makers with dozens of SKUs need to switch from, say, peanut butter granola to a nut-free bar all in the same day.
- Scaling up with more operators on the line isn’t a sustainable solution when repetitive, heavy tasks such as manual weighing and bag dumping can add to employee fatigue and injuries.
Transform Your Snack Production Line With Automation
Automation technologies are ideal for meeting the challenges of healthy snack production. As you now know, older systems or manual processes might not have the right protections in place. Here’s how to address each challenge along with real-world examples so you can see what makes sense for your production line.
Adapt Handling Systems for Ingredient Swaps
As snack manufacturers continue to respond to the demand for cleaner labels, ingredient changes bring handling and operational challenges.
These substitutions affect more than just the nutritional label. They impact taste, mouthfeel and how ingredients are handled throughout production. For example, dry sugars require dissolving and liquid sweeteners like honey must be kept at specific temperatures to prevent crystallization and maintain flow consistency.
These changes directly influence bulk ingredient handling systems. Switching between liquid and powder formats means revisiting how ingredients are stored, conveyed and introduced into the process. Think replacing high-fructose corn syrup (HFCS) with honey or granulated sugar.
Here’s another example. Let’s say you need to remove FD&C Red No. 3 from your snack. An alternative could be beet extract. Maybe the amount you use changes, so a half gallon increases to two gallons. Now the water content needs to adjust. Plus, the dye used to go through a bigger pipe, but the beet extract needs a smaller pipe so you can better control its feed profile. Or you might dump it directly into a mixer, rather than try to transfer it.
The bottom line is there might be hundreds of different handling options for an ingredient and they’re all unique.
To maintain efficiency and product quality, manufacturers are investing in systems designed for gentle handling and first-in/first-out freshness. Technologies like silos, bulk bag unloaders and pneumatic conveying systems help streamline the transition from manual scooping to automated, consistent flow, which is especially important when dealing with fragile inclusions.
Adapting to clean label trends requires not just recipe reformulation, but a rethinking of the entire ingredient handling process.
Achieve Consistent Results With Smarter Systems
Precise dosing and weighing of ingredients is critical in modern snack food manufacturing. To meet this challenge, manufacturers need two key elements on their production lines: accuracy and consistency.
Accuracy is hitting the bullseye, while consistency is lining up all the arrows to hit the same spot every time — even if it’s not the bullseye. It’s about getting the right amount, in the right condition, at exactly the right time.
Automation systems help manage these complexities by gaining control over variables that manual operations often overlook. If you’ve been doing it by hand for years, investing in automation means long-term cost-savings by preventing bad batches and upskilling your workforce.
Automation also ensures consistent material delivery to minimize your downstream time of constant equipment adjustments. Engineering teams can customize systems based on different ingredients — even when ingredient details are confidential — as long as they have samples to test for properties such as density, explosiveness and flow behavior.
These differences in ingredient properties can affect flow and dosing. Consider non-GMO ingredient sourcing, which creates recipe adjustments which then affect the ingredients during production. Automated systems adapt in real time so you can correct for things like head pressure differences in silos or ingredient swaps (e.g. white flour versus oat flour) that require recalibration. Even bin location matters; switching to a closer bin could speed up flow, but automation can adjust delivery to maintain consistency.
To meet these challenges, consider technologies such as loss-in-weight feeders and gravimetric dosing units that meet exact batch recipe specs every time so you can reduce waste and off-spec batches. Ultimately, this translates to cost savings and a consistent flavor profile for consumers.
Stop Sweeping Away Profits
Effective ingredient handling isn’t just about efficiency. It also plays a big role in sanitation and worker safety. When systems leak powder or poorly manage dust, it creates more than a mess. Product loss from leaky pipes or faulty seals means you’re literally sweeping profit off the floor. Even small leaks can lead to significant waste over time, as usable (and expensive!) ingredients end up discarded rather than in the snack.
Beyond waste, dust accumulation can impact the entire production environment. When dust is poorly contained or vented, it settles everywhere. In some cases, the dust layer can be so thick that it leaves footprints like walking through snow. This is an obvious red flag for both hygiene and safety. Investing in improved collection systems creates less physical labor for workers and a cleaner, safer environment for enhanced operational efficiency.
Meet Regulations for Explosion Safety
Powdered organic ingredients, such as starches like arrowroot, corn and tapioca and alternative flours, are essential in better-for-you snack formulations. But under certain conditions, they can also pose serious safety risks. When fine dust from these powders mixes with the right amount of air and a spark, it can trigger an explosion.
In the past, equipment manufacturers often carried the responsibility of identifying explosion risks based on the ingredients being handled. Regulations have changed and updated NFPA guidelines shift that responsibility to the snack developer. This means you must now inform equipment suppliers about the properties of the materials you use — especially when it comes to combustibility.
Proper grounding, dust collection and ventilation are essential safeguards for maintaining cleanliness and protecting workers. The 2008 Imperial Sugar explosion is a tragic example of how uncontained dust buildup can have deadly consequences.
To reduce these risks, consider bulk handling systems designed with safety in mind. For example, bulk bag unloaders with dust-tight seals and automatic venting can help contain and capture dust as it’s generated.
As you scale, potential production hazards can decrease with the right equipment. Sharing ingredient data with your equipment partner ensures they can design solutions that protect your people, product and plant.
Improve Cleaning for Allergen Control
Managing allergens isn’t just a good manufacturing practice. It’s a regulatory necessity. Preventing cross-contamination requires smart equipment design, clear standard operating procedures (SOPs) and cleaning systems tailored to the needs of each production line.
For instance, many facilities follow a specific cleaning order based on allergen severity, moving from less to more allergenic ingredients — like starting with gluten-free, then peanut, then peanut and soy, then peanut, soy and milk, and so on. SOPs are established with cleaning procedures measured down to parts per million (PPM) to ensure compliance and accurate labeling. In some cases, such as gluten-free snacks, allergen handling equipment is moved to separate rooms entirely to eliminate any risk of cross-contact.
To support these cleaning processes, equipment should be designed with accessibility in mind. That means clamp-on/clamp-off components like sections of pipe that operators can quickly remove, sanitize and replace to reduce changeover time between allergen runs. Other systems use compressed air to clean containers and hoppers and prevent long line shutdowns.
Clean-in-place (CIP) systems offer a more automated approach and can be configured for nearly any setup. CIP can also be costly, so it’s typically reserved for situations where a high level of hygiene is non-negotiable. While CIP enables thorough wet cleaning, it introduces moisture into the system, which must be managed. Liquid lances and nozzles also allow for deep cleaning without dismantling the entire system.
To minimize downtime, select the right equipment that supports accessibility to make sanitation simpler and safer.
Embrace Automation for a Healthier Future
The rise of healthier snacks isn't just a consumer trend — it’s reshaping how snacks are made. Ultimately, the snack manufacturers that thrive remain competitive with upgraded production lines that are efficient, clean and safe.
Advanced ingredient handling systems pay off in consistent snack products and fewer recalls and issues. To deliver delicious, safe and nutritious snacks at scale, opt for smart automation that positions your company for long-term growth in the dynamic snacking industry.
