The keys to success with inspection and sorting equipment
Consumers are demanding an ever-greater level of protection around product manufacturing, as Neill Barston reports on key developments within the sorting and inspection market
As consumers become ever-more savvy about a whole host of product ranges, delivering lines that are created to the highest and safest standards is vitally important for the confectionery sector.
While the industry’s leading manufacturers have placed a strong emphasis on excellence in protocols for hygiene and utilising the array of technology now at their disposals, there is clearly never any room for complacency.
The past couple of years that have seen major brands and businesses impacted by salmonella incidents, as well as the regular stream of product recalls serve as a significant testimony to the financial damage that can occur from such situations.
It’s also an equally strong matter of preserving brand reputation as well, which can soon cost significant sales if the public loses confidence in product safety.
Thankfully, dedicated inspection equipment is becoming ever-more sophisticated in response to the demands of modern manufacturing.
As previously highlighted, studies from Maximize Market Research, showed that global sales of sorting lines stand at around $4 billion, enjoying notable compound growth of around 5.5 per cent.
Likewise, with inspection lines, these are set to be worth around $905 million by 2027, on a sizeable upward growth track, underlining the need for businesses to fully invest in this side of their operations.
Safety conscious
One such business to do make significant strides in the development of its own lines is Ishida, and as its marketing manager, Torsten Giese, explained, the business is far from resting on its laurels.
He said: “Product quality and safety have always been of paramount importance for confectionery manufacturers, but in today’s highly competitive markets, with pressures on margins and the need to maximise throughput and efficiencies on production and packing lines, the requirement for effective quality control systems has never been greater.
“Indeed, the drive for quality is inextricably linked to the need to protect and maintain brand reputation – of confectionery manufacturers and also their retail customers, particularly when supplying private label products. Consumers are becoming more demanding and less brand-loyal while social media means they have much greater power to affect a brand’s positioning.
As he added, in this scenario, one of the benefits of x-ray inspection over metal detectors is that whereas metal detectors can only detect metal, x-ray technology is much more versatile and can also identify a variety of other foreign bodies. These include dense plastics, rubber, glass and stones.
Equally important, the technology can help to prevent many other quality issues. It can detect broken, over/undersized or missing items in packs, be that five chocolate bars in a multipack instead of six or ice lollies with a wooden stick missing. Mis-shaped product, product with cracks or fissures and sub-standard packaging such as dented tins, are other imperfections that can be identified.
Torsten added: “A further significant benefit of X-ray inspection is the ability of some machines to offer full traceability. In the event of a complaint, data management systems linked to X-ray inspection and labelling can enable retrieval of the X-ray image of a particular pack, establishing beyond doubt whether or not there was a problem and thus helping to eliminate false claims.
“Looking to the future, with markets likely to remain highly competitive, maximising product quality will continue to be a critical requirement for confectionery companies.
New product development will also continue at a pace and that will doubtless bring new challenges for inspection equipment in terms of the product and packaging characteristics they are being asked to handle.
“Our new Ishida IX-EN-2493-Compact X-ray inspection system, for example, has been specifically designed to enable comprehensive foreign body and quality checks to be carried out on small lightweight flow wrapped confectionery and bakery packs on high-speed packing lines.”
Furthermore, he noted that another continuing trend is that of the ongoing development of Industry 4.0 and the Smart Food Factory.
A major part of this has been the way in which equipment on the production and packing lines can be integrated so they communicate seamlessly with each other in order to increase productivity and efficiency.
More recently, these integrated solutions have been further enhanced by the ability of the equipment to exchange live data with centralised and remote systems.
Torsten concluded: “At Ishida, we will continue to enhance our inspection technologies to support to this move to increased automation. We will also maintain our focus on developing inspection solutions that deliver even more substantial energy savings and which can handle any new sustainable packaging formats that may be introduced.”
Company investment
For its part, Norwegian-headquartered business Tomra has placed further investment into its own inspection systems, through officially inaugurated its latest special project facility in Valencia, Spain.
This will offer a showcase for its optical sorting equipment, and will be dedicated to both processed foods and fresh fruit, and is located close to a major horticultural and nut growing region.
As the company explained to Confectionery Production, its latest facilities will offer a hub for Southern Europe and North Africa, and serve as a training, service and spare parts centre.
Karel Strubbe, the new SVP and Head of TOMRA Food for Europe,Africa and the Middle East commented: “We want to work directly with the customer in as few time zones as possible. This enables us to be more agile, to establish an even closer relationship with our customers and ultimately to work better locally. It is vital to improve the speed and quality of communications to always offer the best service.”
Meanwhile, in the US, Washington-based Key Technology group, recently unveiled its RemoteMD 2.0 remote support service for their optical sorting systems. RemoteMD enables Key service technicians to securely connect to a customer’s sorter for real-time remote monitoring as well as technical support.
As the company explained, the system helps optimise equipment performance to protect food safety and ensure product quality while increasing machine uptime and reducing service costs.
“The worldwide labour shortage has made technology experts difficult for food processors to hire and retain. With fewer skilled employees at our customers’ facilities, we’ve identified ways we can help fill the gaps. Leveraging RemoteMD, we can take many machine maintenance tasks off the customer’s plate,” said Jack Lee, Duravant Group President – Food Sorting and Handling Solutions.
