Laminar Wins the 2026 ADS Supplier Partner of the Year Award in the Equipment and Service Category

Dressings and sauces manufacturers recognize Laminar's Process-Aware Autonomy for unlocking production capacity, safeguarding quality control, and delivering measurable productivity and sustainability gains

BOSTON, Oct. 14, 2026 /PRNewswire/ -- Laminar, creator of Process-Aware Autonomy and the foundation that makes self-driving factories possible, today announced The Association for Dressings and Sauces (ADS) has named the physical AI startup the 2026 Supplier Partner of the Year in the Equipment and Service category.

The award was announced at the ADS Annual Business Forum on October 4, 2026, in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Laminar was chosen by committee through a blinded process and reflects true trust by member companies earned on the production floor.

"Laminar represents what the Supplier Partner of the Year Award was created to recognize — a company that has embedded itself in the operations of our manufacturer members and delivered productivity and sustainability results that matter," said Jeannie Milewski, President, The Association for Dressings and Sauces.

Laminar was recognized for transforming the static, timer-based clean-in-place and product changeover cycles that define productivity, water use, and compliance across the dressings and sauces industry into dynamic, self-driving processes that adapt in real time to what is actually happening inside the line. Nominations are submitted by ADS manufacturer member companies for supplier members who have elevated themselves as true partners through equipment and service, ingredients, or packaging.

"Marzetti has been making food for more than a century, and we invest in technology that increases our productivity at our plants," said Paul Liedtke, Sr. Director of Manufacturing Technology at Marzetti. "There's nothing else on the market like Laminar for CIP. It gives us real visibility into our clean-in-place processes — reducing water and chemical usage while improving production uptime."

"A dressings and sauces line can run dozens of formulations, and every switch means a full clean," said Annie Lu, Chief Executive Officer and Co-Founder of Laminar. "Those cleans run to a fixed recipe, so they take longer and use more water and chemicals than the line actually needs. Winning this award, chosen by the manufacturers themselves, confirms that Process-Aware Autonomy makes every factory run as the best version of itself and achieve both sustainability and productivity simultaneously."

Laminar Process-Aware Autonomy

Laminar is a pioneer in Physical AI for process manufacturing, enabling operators to unlock more productive and sustainable production lines. The startup's Process-Aware Autonomy converts inefficient, pre-programmed automation to dynamic, self-driving processes that save time, chemicals, energy, and water — ultimately powering factories that are more agile and more resilient.

• Process-Aware Sensors: Patented, inline sensors retrofit easily into existing infrastructure and generate a unique, digital fingerprint of what's flowing inside the pipe in real-time.
• Process-Aware AI: Factory-proven, foundational ML models interpret the digital fingerprints in the context of a specific manufacturing process to determine the current process state and autonomously drive the optimal next action.
• Process-Aware Insights: Laminar's trust layer that transforms millions of historical, real-time, and predictive process measurements into explainable decisions, verified savings, and actionable opportunities so operators can confidently run the best version of their factory.

Laminar Proven at Scale

Laminar is deployed on hundreds of lines across six continents, including with seven of the ten largest global food and beverage companies — among them AB InBev, Coca-Cola, and Unilever. Across those deployments, Laminar has measured an average of 20% less chemical use, 20% less water per cycle, and cycles running 15% faster. At Unilever's Poznań facility, Laminar saved more than €100,000 annually on each of two lines.

Laminar Industry recognition

The ADS Supplier Partner of the Year Award adds to recognition from some of the industry's most demanding institutions. Laminar received the 2026 FoodTech Innovation Award and the 2026 Edison Gold Award in Manufacturing and Logistics, and was named AB InBev's 2024 Cheers Award winner for outstanding startup partnership and Unilever's 2023 Supplier Startup of the Year. Laminar is a World Economic Forum Technology Pioneer and is deployed in WEF Lighthouse factories, a select group recognized for leadership in advanced industrial technology.

Headquartered at Greentown Labs in Somerville, MA — North America's leading cleantech community, Laminar is a woman-founded startup backed by top-tier investors, including Greycroft, Construct Capital, 2048 Ventures, and Flybridge Capital.

About ADS

Founded in 1926, the Association for Dressings & Sauces is an international trade association representing manufacturers of salad dressing, mayonnaise, and condiment sauces as well as suppliers of raw materials, packaging and equipment to the industry. Its purpose is to serve the best interests of industry members, its customers, and consumers of its products.

About Laminar

Laminar's Process Aware Autonomy is an entirely new category of Physical AI reinventing how leading process manufacturers run more productive, sustainable factories. Our patented, inline sensors measure real-time fluid conditions in every production process, informing our factory-proven, foundational Process-Aware Models that interpret process states to drive optimal decisions that maintain quality standards and reduce waste. The Laminar Insights Platform serves as our trust layer for AI decision making and delivers real-time visibility into the time, water, chemical, and energy saved across every cycle, line, and facility. Across six continents, leading manufacturers like AB InBev, Coca-Cola, and Unilever trust Laminar to run their most critical processes and realize self-driving factories. Learn more at runlaminar.com