Mekitec X-Ray Inspection for Food Safety and Quality Control

Mekitec is a global provider of X-ray systems for the food and beverage processing industry. The company is committed to ensuring safe food by providing high-value inspection systems.

Working within the production line, MEKI™ X-ray systems guarantee safety and quality by detecting and removing food products that contain unwanted foreign objects or other defects. They use the latest X-ray imaging and processing technology, resulting in 100% food quality control.

X-ray inspection systems designed for the food industry

Mekitec’s X-ray inspection systems are designed for packaged food and beverage products and provide value by enabling excellent performance in terms of foreign object detection and quality assurance in an easy-to-use and compact form.

The MEKI systems were designed together with food producers to meet specific food safety and quality control requirements.

Detecting foreign contaminants from food and beverage production

Detecting various hazardous foreign contaminants from food and beverage production is one of the main reasons why food producers implement X-ray inspection as their final critical control point.

By inspecting final products with X-ray technology, food and beverage producers are able to ensure that all of their outbound products are free from hazardous physical contaminants that could pose a safety risk or cause a large-scale product recall.

The X-ray inspection technology is based on the characteristics of the product and possible foreign contaminants, enabling MEKI X-ray Inspection Systems to detect various foreign materials such as metals, glass, stones, ceramics, and even dense plastics.

Quality assurance for primary packaged food and beverage products

X-ray inspection also provides food producers the ability to inspect the quality of their production. The MEKI systems can inspect the product’s integrity and content to assess whether they are consistent throughout the production batches.

This type of overall quality assurance helps food and beverage producers enhance their production quality and brand image by rejecting non-conforming packages from the production line. It also helps to identify where the low-quality products originate from.

Optimal quality assurance results are achieved when the X-ray inspection takes place in the primary packaging phase of production. This also means that only the necessary packages are removed, creating less waste.

Pack-for-pack traceability for food and beverage production

Inspecting primary packaged products with X-ray technology also brings another benefit for food producers, enabling true pack-for-pack traceability. Being able to track food throughout the production and supply chain is crucial for consumer safety, enabling producers to immediately carry out corrective actions such as targeted recalls when a problem or safety hazard is identified.

A key element in food traceability, MEKI X-ray Inspection Systems store the necessary data in the form of reports and images to demonstrate that the products are safe and top-quality when shipping out from the facilities. This gives food and beverage producers security and helps them to identify and eliminate possible flaws or contamination risks in their production environment.

Compliance with the latest food safety standards

Demands from consumers for safer and higher-quality products have driven authorities to increase food safety standards worldwide. This puts greater pressure on food producers to comply with standards and regulations such as FSMA, HARCP, BRC, and SQF.

As X-ray technology is the most advanced inspection method, it fully complies with and even exceeds the demands in all of the food safety standards. This has led many food and beverage producers to choose X-ray inspection solutions over metal detection.

X-ray inspection versus metal detection

The most evident reason to choose X-ray inspection over metal detection is the ability to detect various foreign materials such as glass and stone from the food production, in addition to metals. Compared to metal detection, this takes food safety inspection to a new level.

Another benefit that X-ray technology offers for food producers is the ability to inspect overall product quality. The system can detect if the products are incorrect in terms of completeness, integrity or content, and automatically rejects these from the production line, leaving only safe and top-quality products to be delivered to consumers.