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Raising the bar on safety

A confectionery manufacturer installs 19 metal detectors at six of its production plants to ensure product quality.

Pw 5583 Urc 351

Based in the Philippines, Universal Robina Corp. (URC) makes a range of snack foods, candy, beverages, noodles, and tomato-based products. Recently, the company installed metal detectors at six of its 13 production plants in the Philippines to meet the U.S. Food & Drug Administration’s HACCP (Hazard Analysis and Critical Control Point) food safety standards.

Richard Cabrillos is the manager of URC’s Calamba facility, which makes confectionery products. “We had a filtering device to ensure contaminants didn’t adhere to the product,” he says, “but there were still some points after the filter where metal contaminants could be injected into the product.” Prior to the metal detector installation, product was inspected manually, he says, but the method was unreliable because inspectors sometimes overlooked contaminants.

In preparation for HACCP certification, Cabrillos chose the Apex 100 digital signal process-based metal detector from Thermo Fisher Scientific (www.thermofisher.com). Thermo Fisher Scientific teamed up with Allen Packaging Systems (011/63.2.8750243) in the Philippines to install a conveyor rejection device for the metal detector.

Although Cabrillos’ main reason for choosing the APEX was its low cost, he was also pleased with the unit’s performance and ease of use. “The Apex is user-friendly,” he says, “and we can easily stop the conveyor when metal is detected.”

Heavy metal

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