Processing's Weekly Mixer: The hidden utility driving chemical plant performance, and more
Welcome to the latest installment of Processing's Weekly Mixer, which highlights recent content from EndeavorB2B brands relevant to process manufacturers.
This week's entry features content from Chemical Processing, Plant Services, Automation World and Food Processing, as well as this week's content from Processing.
The hidden utility driving chemical plant performance
Alliance for Chemical Distribution CEO talks Iran, tariffs and the fight over rail
Also from CP: In the latest episode of the Distilled podcast, Eric Byer ruminates on how the Iran conflict, oil price swings, tariff uncertainty and rail consolidation are squeezing chemical distributors. Listen to the episode below.
The reality of a refinery turnaround
From Plant Services: A successful refinery turnaround is a down payment on a facility’s integrity for the next half-decade. Explore how a five-phase framework keeps the site stable.
Fluke's Frederic Baudart writes:
Imagine your facility’s population surging from 300 to over 2,000 people overnight. This is the reality you face during a refinery turnaround — a high-intensity period where a single day of delay can run into millions and, in some industries, erase a year’s profitability.
The pressure is most visible during execution, but the schedule is shaped much earlier. Success depends on a rigorous five-phase framework that begins over a year before the first valve is turned and doesn't end until the final lessons-learned review is complete.
What happens during a refinery turnaround?
A refinery turnaround is a planned, comprehensive shutdown that typically takes place every three to five years. During the turnaround, units come offline for weeks so teams can do work that can’t be done safely on a running plant. That work spans statutory inspections and integrity checks through to repair and changeout jobs, upgrades, and the testing that proves systems are ready to restart.
How to get more value from the automation you already have
From Automation World: Advanced tools fail on unstable foundations. Lasting efficiency gains begin long before any new technology enters the conversation.
Hargrove Controls & Automation's Heath Stephens writes:
Efficiency has always been a core driver for industrial automation. Long before digitalization and Industry 4.0 became buzzwords, automation was about improving safety, reducing variability and producing quality product with less waste. Today’s operating environment has changed and many facilities are now facing tighter margins, more volatile demand, aging assets and a workforce stretched thin, but improved efficiency goals are as important as ever.
Many facilities are responding to today’s economic challenges with renewed interest in automation and digital tools, but efficiency gains don’t always come from chasing the newest technology. They come from making sure the fundamentals are solid and building from there.
Click here to read the entire article.
The FDA's 2026 food safety to-do list
From Food Processing: The agency’s lengthy “Human Foods Program 2026 Priority Deliverables” targets food dyes and other ingredients, the GRAS system and ultraprocessed foods.
FP editor in chief Dave Fusaro writes:
The FDA in February revealed its 2026 to-do list for the food side of the agency. Titled “Human Foods Program 2026 Priority Deliverables,” it targets food dyes and other questionable ingredients and the GRAS system of ingredient approvals and implies an effort to somehow deal with ultraprocessed foods – among other priorities.
Click here to read FP's summary of the FDA report.
