Looking for new ways to boost your bakery operating profits? With North America’s skilled labor pool dwindling and productivity topping the agenda for baked goods, grains and snack factories, metal detection specialist Fortress Technology reveals at the 2019 International Baking Industry Exposition (IBIE) multiple ways manufacturers can increase output, protect their inspection investment, plus potentially save tens of thousands of dollars a month.

Decreasing labor costs was cited as the top rationale (35%) for making a purchasing decision in Baking & Snack’s 2019 Equipment Trends Survey. To solve this, visitors to IBIE will see first-hand how Fortress Technology’s latest food metal detectors and ancillary equipment can reduce the number of workers performing manual tasks on production lines, including metal detector performance verification checks.

Rather than manually testing a metal detector, which on snack and ingredient gravity inspection systems can be labor intensive and especially difficult to access, Halo Automatic Testing from Fortress verifies the performance and reject system with minimal disruption to the production line and resources. By eliminating human error and limiting production disruptions, Halo can save thousands of dollars per production line. It also strengthens food safety and compliance and product quality. Test results are logged automatically, providing bakery and snack suppliers with a reliable audit trail.

Payback for a new Fortress metal detector fitted with Halo Automatic Testing technology is typically less than 12 months.  On high speed lines, or lines running expensive products, payback can be realized in a matter of weeks.

For modern bakeries and snack food manufacturers, high production speeds are critical. With just milliseconds to determine if a product is good or a reject, Fortress’s latest innovations achieve the highest metal detection sensitivity in the industry. The result - fewer machine stoppages to verify, check and clear false rejects and correct system issues, which can quickly damage profits.

Should an issue with a metal detector occur, Fortress offers a range of networked communication options that can be used for remote management. Providing centralized control, it enables bakeries to monitor performance and machine stoppages in real time. Especially useful for multi-site operations, production managers don’t even have to be physically in front of the metal detector to resolve an issue.

Increasing the volume of lanes to inspect product ranges can also boost productivity and increase inspection capacity. For this Fortress created the multi-aperture metal detector. Custom built to match most lane configurations, the system can perform high speed metal detection and reduce total cost of ownership by up to 65 percent by drastically reducing the amount of product wasted per reject event.

Also new to the show is the Interceptor DF (Divergent Field). Created for the inspection of high value, low-profile foods like cookies and snack bars running across a conveyor, this innovative system inspects raw, cooked and packaged products utilizing multiple electromagnetic field orientations. No other machine comes close to detecting very thin flake and foil non-spherical metal contaminants like the Interceptor DF.

To view Fortress Technology’s Never Obsolete bakery, snack, grain, and bulk inspection innovations, visit Booth 7109 at IBIE.