This last Thursday, March 10th Expo West 2016 kicked off with the Fresh Ideas Organic show. This is a one-day-only show focused on organic products. It’s a hot spot before the main show floor opens for buyers to find new organic trends and organic purchasers to locate suppliers.

Over the last few years, the Centra Foods blog has become a good source of information for anyone buying edible oils for bulk or industrial uses (especially olive oil).

This article will be a unique look back over the top 10 blogs that we’ve posted in the last 3 years. These blogs have been the most searched by purchasers like you with questions.

We’ll start with the #10 blog, and work our way backwards to the most popular oil article out there.

If you are a food manufacturer serving the natural food industry and you’re not already doing organics, you’ve probably wondered the following:

What would it take for us to get organic certified? And would it really be worth it?

I recently sat down with our Quality Control Manager and our Warehouse Manager to ask just these questions. I wanted to find out, exactly what it takes to get USDA Organic Certified. I asked questions like:

• What is the process to become organic certified?
• How challenging is it?
• What can the warehouse expect?
• What can purchasing expect?
• How long is it going to take us?

These answers, along with an analysis of your target market, will help you answer the big question: is it worth it for your business?

In this article, originally published on Supply Chain Opz, Professor Burcu Keskin from University of Alabama will share 7 supply chain trends that working professionals should watch.

As pressure to improve supply chain cost performance increases for many companies, the evaluation and selection of competent suppliers becomes a key concern. Typically, total cost, quality, and delivery performance appear as critical factors in the supplier selection process. However, complex supplier relationships, unreliable sources of material supply, and ever-increasing customer expectations greatly add to the expectations to select the best suppliers and conduct their operations more efficiently.

Chances are that if you work in the food industry (or if you’ve gone grocery shopping in the last year), you’ve seen the non-gmo project’s colorful butterfly seal.

But… in case anyone is new to the food industry, or you are just now looking at getting your product Non-GMO Project Verified, I’d like to do a quick review of this quality seal — what it means, and what you can expect if you want to get your product Non-GMO Project Verified™.

The USDA Organic Seal is the quality assurance program that is run by the United States Department of Agriculture as a part of the national organic program (also known as the NOP).

In this article, we will show you a list of operations management book that inspires world's leading business leaders from Amazon, Apple, Microsoft and more.  

The Food Safety Modernization Act (FSMA) is the most sweeping reform of food safety laws in over seven decades. Almost four years after it was signed into law, the final rules governing preventive control for human and animal foods were finally published this September. Now, most FDA regulated companies must prepare for compliance by September 2016.

Compliance dates for the new requirements are defined and more flexible to assist industry compliance while still advancing FDA’s food safety goals. Even with that flexibility, it is important for companies to fully understand five key points regarding the final rule:

• Food Safety Plan v HACCP Plan
• Risk Based Preventative Controls
• Qualified Individual & Auditor
• Good Manufacturing Practices (GMP's)
• Supply Chain Program

“The first responsibility of a leader is to define reality. The last is to say thank you. In between the two, the leader must become a servant and a debtor”.   Max De Pree, Leadership Is An Art

This is my favorite quote from the book Leadership is an Art. It is an attempt by the author to answer the rather large question, what is leadership?

The thing I love about this quote is that it’s so utterly true. It is the first concise description that I’ve found that explains, wholly and completely the beginning and end of what a leader is most responsible for. If they can just do these things, everything else will fall into place.

Ever heard of winterized olive oil? It’s not commonly discussed, but it’s a good topic to bring up since we’re in the midst of winter.

Winterized olive oil is any grade of olive oil that has had the waxes removed so that it doesn’t solidify in the cold weather (or in the refrigerator). This process is most commonly done on oils that will be used in dressings — it helps an oil-based dressing stay liquid in the fridge.

There’s a few discussions that are at play here. First, what is winterizing? And why would any olive oil need to be winterized in the first place? Lastly, if you’re looking for a winterized olive oil, we can give you some general guidelines and try to point you in the right direction. 

This article was originally a case study published by Omega-9 Oils, and is printed here with permission. Their canola seed, used to produce the oil that this article refers to, is now available from Centra Foods in a non-GMO form as Non-GMO High Oleic Canola Oil.

The Omega-9 Oils team partnered with a national polished casual-dining restaurant chain with an extensive menu.

Many plates include fried items, from “drop and fry” items such as fries and potstickers, to signature hand-breaded chicken, shrimp and fish. The excess moisture and breading from these hand-battered items causes more rapid degradation of the frying oil, which drove interest in and support of a fry test.

The trial compared their current oil, commodity soybean, with a blend of Omega-9 Canola and corn oil.

Did you know that if olive oil gets cold, it turns into a butter-like consistency? This isn’t a big deal if you’re cooking at home — but if you’re negotiating cold winters in a food manufacturing plant, it can be a much bigger challenge. Perhaps you’ve even experienced it.

This poses a great question for production managers: what do you do when bulk olive oil solidifies?

Luckily, there’s lots of reasonably simple ways to handle this in your warehouse. Long story short, you’ll need to heat the oil to liquify it, which will allow you to get pumping. The other good news is that when olive oil solidifies, the quality remains the same, so you have nothing to worry about.

Do you worry about how you’re going to reach all of your goals in 2016?

January is a time when many people are looking at the big picture over the next year — which can be an overwhelming task.

Maybe you feel like giving up at times, or you aren’t getting noticed at your job by anyone. If you have ever felt like that, don’t worry — you will make it.

In this blog, I will be using some of my favorite quotes to help encourage you if you’re feeling overwhelmed, if you feel like giving up, or if you feel like you’re not being seen for your hard work.