Ready meals and food-to-go products often have multiple elements or ingredients packaged in different compartments, include cutlery or condiments.
Many snacks such as nuts and cereals fluctuate in density which can make it difficult to find foreign bodies, which can create inspection challenges for convenience food manufacturers, said the firm.
Loma said its combination X5c X-ray and Checkweighing unit was developed for ready meal and food-to-go processors and packers.
The machine detects physical contaminants, does fill level and seal inspection, mass measurement and component counts and can identify lumps of product including seasoning or powder.
Loma said its X5c X-ray combination system helps manufacturers adhere to the latest British Retail Consortium (BRC) standards and meet retailers’ codes of practice.
It is capable of running at up to 150 packs per minute and has separate reject bins for out of weight and contaminated products.
The X5c X-ray machine can be bolted on to a CW3 Checkweigher as one unit for Critical Control Point (CCP) detection.
It reduces cost of ownership of X-ray technology by 30% compared to the company’s other X5 models and is for companies switching to X-ray for the first time or to replace lower performance ferrous-in-foil twin head metal detectors.