In an exclusive conversation with Food & Beverage Processing, Dr. Abhinav Pandey, Managing Director of PMG Engineering Private Limited, shares how his firm is transforming the way food and beverage factories are conceived, designed, and delivered. With over 230+ projects executed across 12 countries and ₹6,000+ crore in capital investment managed, PMG has emerged as a trusted name in building future-ready, sustainable food infrastructure. Focused exclusively on the food sector, PMG offers end-to-end engineering, from concept to commissioning, anchored in deep industry knowledge, hygienic design, and cross-disciplinary collaboration. In this interview, Dr. Pandey explores into the company’s core philosophy, its sector-specific approach, and how it is helping food manufacturers achieve compliance, efficiency, and resilience in a rapidly changing global landscape.
Can you tell us about your company’s journey and core philosophy in providing end-to-end engineering services for the food processing industry?
PMG Engineering was founded in 2015 with a clear and ambitious purpose to build food factories the right way. Since then, we’ve completed over 230+ food industry projects, managing ₹6,000+ crore in capital investment across 100+ locations in 12 countries. Our portfolio spans dairy, beverages, ingredients, snacks, and more.
Our core philosophy is anchored in ownership, integration, and performance. We work as an extension of our client’s team, enabling them to make informed decisions and deliver long-term value. Our vision is to be the preferred partner worldwide for building optimal, sustainable food and beverage factories.
We offer end-to-end services from concept to commissioning, including design, procurement support, construction supervision, and technical advisory. Whether it’s a greenfield facility or a complex upgrade, our goal is not just to deliver drawings or reports, but to create high-performance factories that are scalable, efficient, and fully compliant with global hygiene and safety standards.
Our approach ensures the sustainable production of safe, reliable, and consistently high-quality products. The factory operates through robust, fool-proof systems that are monitored not managed by operators. It fully complies with global food safety standards and often outperforms competing brands in quality benchmarks. With operations running smoothly, the management and staff are freed from day-to-day firefighting and can instead focus on productivity, innovation, and strategic growth, fostering a culture built on – Zero Waste. One Team. 100% Engagement. The result is a future-ready facility, recognized as an industry leader for 15–25 years, with seamless scalability for expansion.
What differentiates your approach when it comes to designing and building food factories that meet global hygiene and food safety standards?
Good engineering cannot happen in silos. That’s why we offer a single-window, integrated solution covering process, automation, civil, mechanical, electrical, quality, and other disciplines. This relieves clients from having to coordinate multiple consultants and ensures seamless alignment.
Secondly, great design alone doesn’t deliver great projects. So, we pair our design services with strong on-ground supervision, owning the execution phase with accountability for quality, timelines, and cost.
Importantly, we focus exclusively on the food industry. Our engineers are well-versed in food safety, hygienic design, and regulatory standards, unlike generalist consultants. We don’t supply machinery, act as contractors, or represent vendors. This independence allows us to make unbiased decisions purely in the client’s interest. Every project is an opportunity to raise the bar—not replicate a past success. Our cross-sector experience helps us apply high-hygiene practices from one domain, like dairy or nutrition, to others such as snacks or RTE foods.
We split our services into Basic Design and Detailed Engineering. The Basic Design phase, lasting 4–6 weeks, helps clients fully understand project scope, costs, and timelines before making significant investments. It also enables us to offer a one-time, fixed fee—safeguarding the client from cost escalations down the road.
Food safety is a growing concern globally. How does PMG incorporate hygienic design principles to ensure compliance and safety across the project lifecycle?
We start with a Factory Masterplan that addresses zoning, man-material movement, utility flows, and placement of critical functions. Everything is designed from the start to avoid common food safety risks—be it cross-contamination, inadequate processing, or poor air handling.
We incorporate QA/QC elements alongside process and civil design, not as afterthoughts. Our detailed engineering draws on insights from hundreds of audits across past projects, helping us preempt safety issues others might miss. Every design undergoes multi-level reviews including my personal review before it’s issued.
For procurement, we define clear User Requirement Specifications (URS) with hygienic engineering requirements that vendors must meet. This ensures we’re not buying what’s convenient for suppliers, but what’s right for the factory. Our project managers ensure each stage—design, procurement, installation gets the focus it needs. We work detail-by-detail, with seasoned professionals at the helm. At site level, our engineers guide contractors not only with inspections, but also by educating them—raising quality standards while maintaining project speed.
Your projects span across dairy, beverages, snacks, and ingredients. How do you tailor engineering solutions to the unique needs of each segment?
Each segment has its own challenges thermal sensitivity in beverages, dust control in powders, oil handling in snacks, or microbial risks in dairy. At PMG, we tailor our frameworks to each sector’s specific needs.
We begin by understanding the client’s products, operations, and vision. This informs a design that’s not only compliant but also adaptable—able to accommodate new SKUs, future expansions, and variable automation levels.
We have dedicated process engineers for each segment, backed by an integrated team. We stay updated with trends through active participation in trade fairs, conferences, and industry networks. Our team also bridges industry and academia—sharing knowledge and gaining insights from both sides. This spirit of curiosity and collaboration helps us continually refine our expertise and contribute real value to our clients’ businesses.
As sustainability takes center stage in food manufacturing, how is PMG reimagining the factory of tomorrow with smarter systems, cleaner technologies, and eco-first thinking?
Sustainability is integral to our design philosophy—both as a responsibility and a value driver. From day one, we embed energy-efficient systems, water-saving designs, and waste-to-energy solutions into every project.
We recover waste heat from evaporators and compressors to preheat milk or generate hot water for CIP cycles, reducing steam load. We design refrigeration systems using natural refrigerants like ammonia or CO₂, integrated with VFD compressors and thermal storage to cut peak energy demand. We include ZLD systems and rainwater harvesting, and design buildings that meet IGBC/AP green building norms—with features like natural light, low-VOC materials, and energy-efficient HVAC. We also integrate rooftop solar PV and anaerobic digesters for high-COD effluent, producing biogas to fuel boilers or generate electricity. To make sustainability measurable, we simulate and benchmark energy and water usage, allowing clients to set and monitor ESG goals. The result is a plant that’s efficient, compliant, and future-ready—for green audits, climate disclosures, and even ESG-linked financing.
How important is cross-disciplinary collaboration among your teams in ensuring seamless projects and plant operations?
It’s absolutely vital. A food factory isn’t just a collection of systems—it’s an inter-dependent ecosystem. If process design doesn’t align with civil layout, or if utility flows don’t match hygiene zoning, the whole plant suffers.
Unfortunately, we see this often—promoters invest in great machinery or infrastructure but end up with a disjointed facility that struggles with basic compliance and operations. That’s why one of PMG’s founding principles was cross-disciplinary collaboration. Our teams don’t work in silos; they co-design from day one. I often use the analogy of a car—each part may be manufactured separately, but the design must be integrated. If the car door doesn’t match the frame, no amount of precision can fix the final product. The same applies to food factories.
Looking ahead, how do you see technology, automation, and sustainable practices shaping the future of food factory engineering in India and globally?
The next decade will transform food factory engineering. What were once advantages—technology, automation, sustainability—are now essential.
- We see five key shifts:
- Flexible Manufacturing: Modular lines and adaptive utilities will support diverse SKUs and frequent changeovers.
- Digital-First Factories: SCADA, IoT, and digital twins will drive predictive maintenance, traceability, and optimization.
- Food Safety by Design: Real-time validation will replace reactive audits, with automated CIP and digital batch records.
- Low-Carbon Infrastructure: Factories will need demonstrable carbon reduction via refrigerants, MVRs, and biogas recovery.
- Decentralized Models: Smart, regional plants will reduce logistics cost and deliver fresher products closer to demand centers.
At PMG, we’re not just preparing for this future—we’re building it. Our job is to turn ambitious ideas into real, scalable, and sustainable food infrastructure.
To learn more, visit www.pmg.engineering or reach out to Dr. Abhinav Pandey at
[email protected]
About Dr. Abhinav Pandey
Dr. Abhinav Pandey is the Managing Director of PMG Engineering Private Limited, a leading firm specializing in end-to-end engineering solutions for the food and beverage industry. An accomplished engineer and entrepreneur, he holds a B.Tech and PhD in Mechanical Engineering from IIT Roorkee, along with an MS from the University of Southern California (USC). He began his career at Nestle in 2010 before founding PMG in 2015.He is a Certified Manufacturing Engineer (SME), IGBC Accredited Professional, and a BEE-certified Energy Auditor. In addition to his engineering leadership, Dr. Abhinav is a published researcher, technology innovator, and regular speaker at conferences on food factory design, automation, and hygienic engineering. His vision is to build infrastructure that not only meets global standards but sets new industry benchmarks.
