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A Quick Metal Detector Turnaround Gets Mushroom Maker Back Online

When a legacy metal detection system went down and brought production with it, Sunny Dell Foods was able to get back in operation with a brand new system in just 36 hours.

Sunny Dell Foods is a private label and custom recipe provider of high-quality marinated and refrigerated mushrooms, pasta and other sauces, soups, dressings, marinades, peppers and capers.
Sunny Dell Foods is a private label and custom recipe provider of high-quality marinated and refrigerated mushrooms, pasta and other sauces, soups, dressings, marinades, peppers and capers.
Sunny Dell Foods

Picture this: A key piece of equipment goes down on a weekday morning. It’s an old system with no parts available, so it’s no longer serviceable. But without it, your production can’t run. How quickly can you get a new system in place?

It’s a scenario that no plant manager hopes to face. But thankfully, when Oxford, Pa.-based Sunny Dell Foods faced this very situation when an older metal detector went down on a USDA-certified line, the family-owned private label and custom recipe provider of high-quality marinated and refrigerated mushrooms was operating again in 36 hours with a new liquid line metal detector back in place.

When Sunny Dell Foods owner Cary Caligiuri called his Eriez sales representative with PennQuip in Ambler, Pa., Steve Hilliard told him that Eriez had a unit ready to go as part of its Quick Ship Program. Caligiuri was so desperate to get his line back up and running, he made the 12-hour roundtrip drive to Eriez himself the next morning to pick up the equipment. “I wanted to keep my employees working and we needed to provide USDA-level performance now to be able to ship,” Caligiuri says.

Hilliard was on-site at Sunny Dell to get the metal detector set up when Caligiuri returned. “Eriez and PennQuip, together with the Sunny Dell team, kept me running,” Caligiuri says. “Steve Hilliard was there to set up and calibrate the unit. I couldn’t be happier. In 36 hours, we were back in operation.”

Hilliard, whose been a sales rep of Eriez equipment for 30 years, is capable of servicing, setup, training, calibration and validation. “The majority of our reps are capable of that,” Hilliard says.

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