Food safety developments to be showcased

The latest deveSide Beam X-Raylopments and innovations in food safety and quality control will be showcased in an event being organised by packaging systems specialist Ishida Europe.

From 21st October to 6th November, the company will be running a series of demonstrations at its UK headquarters in Woodgate, Birmingham to highlight the capabilities of its newest x-ray, checkweigher, seal tester and vision system models.

With fierce competition across all sectors of the food industry, ensuring the highest standards of product quality is essential to maintain brand image and loyalty, and secure valuable retail shelf space.  Equally true, a product recall for any sort of quality or contamination problem can not only be extremely damaging in terms of loss of consumer confidence and reputation but the financial implications – including heavy retailer fines – can also be immense.

“For these reasons, it is vital that companies take a proactive approach to quality control to put the systems in place to ensure any potential quality or safety issues are swiftly identified and dealt with before goods leave the factory,” explains Jim Bedford, Ishida Europe’s product manager for x-ray Inspection Systems.

Jesus Albillos, the company’s business manager for dynamic weighing systems, adds, “At our dedicated demonstration facility within our factory, visitors will be able to see our various models in operation and how they can be combined into a fully integrated quality control solution. Equally important, our x-ray and checkweigher models have been designed in line with current UK supermarket specifications.”

Ishida’s x-ray models can detect a variety of contaminants including metal, glass, bones, shells, stones, hard rubber and plastic down to 0.3mm in size, and can also be used for other quality control operations such as product grading by length, presence of clips, voids in product, product deformation, missing or damaged pieces, and fill-level control.

The Ishida event will feature two new x-ray models – the IX-GE-B3034, which is capable of detecting contaminants within products packed in PET bottles, tetra packs, carton brick packs and pouches; and the IX-G2, specifically designed for bone detection.

The Ishida DACS-G checkweigher, demonstrated with integrated metal detector, features a newly designed loadcell that is fast and accurate, which is able to operate with reliability in the harshest of environments. It can also switch between two weighing capacities to allow a larger product range to be packed on one line.

The DACS-G will be demonstrated using Ishida’s IDCS II (Ishida Data Capture System). This system provides data monitoring and analysis for every pack that goes across the checkweigher in order to help improve Overall Equipment Efficiency (OEE), monitor packing line performance, enhance the profitability of production lines and generally enable food packers and processors to manage their operations more efficiently.

Ishida’s seal testers provide reliable, sensitive detection of leaks for both bags and trays on high speed packing lines. A major benefit of these systems is that the testing process is non-destructive, meaning failed pack contents can be re-packed.

Ishida tray seal testers are ideal for a wide variety of tray types, materials and sizes. A 1mm hole can be detected at up to 140bpm.

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