Manufacturers and processing companies in the meat, poultry, dairy, bakery and ready meal segments, and those who produce products packaged in metallised film, can now achieve detection sensitivity levels previously only seen in dry product inspection.
For years the electrical signal ‘product effect’ detected in some foods packaged in metallised film, or foods with a high moisture or salt content, has reduced detection sensitivities significantly below the levels achieved with inspections of dry non-conductive food products.
Using a sophisticated inspection algorithm, the newly launched Mettler-Toledo Profile Advantage metal detector all but removes the ‘product effect’ phenomenon. This results in up to 50% improvements in detection sensitivity levels, irrespective of packaging material, which ensures that the Profile Advantage finds more metal contaminants than traditional systems in challenging applications such as wet, warm or chilled food.
In addition, the solution is capable of rigorously reducing the number of false rejects. For example, meat and poultry producers can typically see false rejects rates associated with ‘product effect’ reduced by up to 95% when trying to detect the smallest metal contaminants. The Profile Advantage uses multi-simultaneous frequency (MSF) technology to step change performance.
With recent changes to retailer Codes of Practice and more stringent standards being applied across the food industry by the Global Food Safety Initiative (GFSI), manufacturers are looking for ways to ensure the removal of metal contaminations with high production line efficiency and bottom line savings. The Profile Advantage appears to enable significant cost savings to be realised, through fewer incorrect product rejects and less operational downtime investigating issues.
“Conquering the product effect phenomenon has been a key issue for our industry for some time,” said Jonathan Richards, head of marketing at Mettler-Toledo Safeline Metal Detection. “Our Profile Advantage system is a major technological breakthrough in metal detection capability as it helps manufacturers increase brand protection, reduce costs and improve productivity. Consequently, the new system supports food companies to produce only contaminant-free product in their manufacturing facility. Combining this reliable performance with an overall low Total Cost of Ownership calculation enables metal detection to become the preferred technology choice”.
Central to the multi-simultaneous frequency technology of the Profile Advantage is the ‘3S’ algorithm and its Product Signal Suppressionfeature. Unlike conventional metal detectors, that simply capture and store the active product signal, the Profile Advantage modifies the signal during setup so that the food product presents itself as if it were a dry product without product effect. Once production starts the detection algorithm is applied to each of the products that pass through the detector. As such, much higher levels of detection sensitivity are achieved as the active product signal is perceived as being negligible and the detection envelope for contaminants is optimised.
The Product Signal Suppression feature is not only able to cope with challenging applications of wet, moist, high salt content products or those that are in a state of flux cooling or thawing, but also with products packaged in metallised film. This packaging type has, up until now, made it more difficult for detectors to compete with other types of technology on performance. However, with MSF technology, the Profile Advantage meets factory inspection standards on most metal types and delivers considerably higher performance when detecting aluminium contaminants.
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