Major Cheese Manufacturer Relies On Mettler-Toledo Safeline To Assure Food Safety

To assure the highest product quality and food safety, one of the world's leading cheese manufacturers recently turned to Mettler-Toledo Safeline. They installed a Safeline PowerChekPlus x-ray system for their bulk packaging line and twelve Safeline PowerPhasePLUS metal detectors for all of their other cheese manufacturing lines.

"On the bulk packaging line, we hot-fill flavored spreadable cream cheeses into three-pound and five-pound containers," explained the cheese manufacturer's director of quality. "The Safeline x-ray system is ideal for this application since the density and variable consistency of the product make it a challenge for most metal detectors."

Safeline's PowerChekPlus is a new generation, intelligent x-ray system that detects product contamination while simultaneously inspecting fill-level and package integrity to automatically remove out-of-tolerance product from the production line. The PowerChekPlus x-ray system detects ferrous and non-ferrous metal as well as other contaminates such as bits of bone, stone and glass. While these contaminants are not likely to be found in plain cream cheese, there is more potential for such materials when producing flavored products that incorporate condiments made of fruits or vegetables.

"Before we choose Safeline, we did a side-by-side comparison with the Safeline x-ray system and a competitive x-ray system so we would know what to expect. It was clear that Safeline out-performed the other system."

The Safeline x-ray system features superior image processing technology that optimizes the performance of the system. With an intuitive operator interface and Safeline's innovative auto-learn function that automates set-up and makes frequent calibration unnecessary, the Safeline x-ray system is easy to set-up and operate. The system continuously analyzes product variations and automatically adjusts to achieve optimum sensitivity and eliminate false rejects. A high-resolution color screen provides a visual reference of the machine's operation using video images and provides real-time diagnostics. Changeover takes only seconds because the systems can be pre-programmed to manage multiple packages.

For all twelve of their other cheese manufacturing lines, the customer selected and installed Safeline PowerPhasePLUS metal detectors. These metal detectors feature advanced, microprocessor technology with digital signal processing that maximizes detection sensitivity while minimizing false rejects.

"Safeline PowerPhasePLUS metal detectors are exactly what we need on our lines that handle bar cheeses and smaller packages," the customer said. "Given our steady growth and expansion rates, we expect to add more Safeline metal detectors and x-ray machines to our production in the future."

SOURCE: Mettler-Toledo Safeline