Boston Sword & Tuna (BST), a U.S. seafood distributor, is making use of Profile Advantage metal detectors from Mettler Toledo on three packaging lines to help ensure final product quality.
BST processes a wide variety of frozen fish and seafood out of its 50,000-sq.-ft. Boston facility, and the company needed a quality system that could handle the challenges seafood poses to detectors.
“Inspecting seafood is particularly difficult for most metal detectors,” states Phil Tripoli, Maintenance Manager at BST. “Saltwater and ice put out a magnetic field that can confuse run-of-the-mill systems, so we needed something high tech that could reliably identify metal contaminants without triggering false rejects. Mettler Toledo is well regarded in the seafood industry, and their Profile Advantage is a great fit for our needs.”
BST installed its first Profile Advantage metal detector in 2020 and added two more in 2023 to other packaging lines.
How the Profile Advantage metal detectors work
The Profile Advantage metal detectors contain a large aperture used to inspect 10-pound corrugated cases of fresh and frozen products, including cod, salmon, haddock, crab, swordfish, scallops and shellfish.
To help prevent false rejects and produce clearer results, the detectors use multi-simultaneous frequencies to distinguish between metal contaminants and natural product characteristics. BST follows a quality assurance protocol that includes calibration tests done twice a day using certified test strips made from ferrous, non-ferrous, and stainless-steel metals.
“Our new inspection systems deliver great detection sensitivity, which is imperative given how frequently metal objects turn up in wild caught seafood,” says Tripoli. “Plus, these metal detectors are consistent. They stay within our required specifications during long production cycles without any adjustments.”
Furthermore, Profile Advantage can store up to 100 different recipes for fast recall changeovers. The detectors’ product clustering capability further simplifies operations by allowing similar products to share the same settings. New products receive optimal parameters from a single-pass auto-setup routine, which is done in a matter of seconds.
If the system detects metal, its conveyor automatically stops so the package can be removed from the line for further inspection.
“Any flagged cases undergo reinspection through one of our other metal detectors to confirm the finding,” Tripoli explains. “Fortunately, re-runs are very rare, and the few we’ve had prove the accuracy of these systems.”
Reinforcing BST's food safety efforts
Boston Sword & Tuna found the Profile Advantage detector to be an effective solution for its quality needs, and the ease of buying and implementation reinforced the company’s decision to add more detectors to its lines.
“We were so impressed with our first Profile Advantage that going back for more was an easy decision,” states Tripoli. “The entire purchasing and startup process was seamless, thanks to excellent support from Mettler Toledo and our sales rep, Brian Vernet of Flo-Dynamics.”
Seafood inspection can be challenging due to the conditions of products, but the Profile Advantage systems’ quality capabilities aid BST’s food safety efforts and growth.
“As we continue to expand our operations and serve more customers across the country, maintaining the highest food safety standards remains our top priority,” Tripoli says. “Our Profile Advantage systems give us confidence that we’re protecting consumers and help us deliver the outstanding product quality that has defined our company for generations.”
