Going The Extra Mile for Canned & Bottled Goods

At FlexXray, we’re the leading third-party QA hold resolution service in the food and beverage industry. We’ve developed a method using custom processes to identify foreign material contamination of all types down to 0.8 mm or smaller — including foreign material contamination found in canned and bottled goods — to help clear foreign material contamination holds.

Each step in your manufacturing process is an opportunity for foreign material contamination to enter your product. Your plant has critical control points throughout your internal processes to ensure that product remains free of foreign material contaminants. In an ideal world, these control points would be sufficient to catch all foreign material contamination.

As food producers know, even the best processes miss foreign material contamination. At FlexXray, we’re here to catch the materials that even the best, most thorough processes in the world have missed, and we’ve got a long history of successful foreign material detection working with the best companies in the industry to prove it. FlexXray has the longest history, best methodologies, and most effective x-ray food inspection process in the world for third-party product hold resolution.

Canned and bottled goods present a broad range of risks for foreign material issues. Some canned and bottled goods are minimally processed, like canned fruits and vegetables. Others represent a wide variety of steps and sources that add another layer of foreign material risk to your end product. FlexXray has seen it all. Here are just a few of the ways we’ve seen foreign material contamination affect canned and bottled goods:

Raw Materials

Customers have sent us raw materials like flour, corn or spices. Our x-ray food inspection process has frequently found non-food materials like stone or metal within batches of raw materials intended for canning or bottling.

Processing

Depending on the complexity of your product, processing can include a few steps or dozens of critical control points. Often, we see materials from the production line itself show up as foreign material contamination. Filler nozzles wear out and break off, metal from machinery shears and enters product, or bone from meat product can splinter in sizes not detectable by inline technology or processes. These are just a few examples of the foreign material contamination risks we’ve seen that are ongoing and affect our entire industry.

Bottling & Canning

If you work with glass bottles, you know that glass can break on the production line for various reasons (internal calibration issues, manufacturing defects, etc.) Glass is a costly concern in foreign material contamination, as the harm that glass can pose to profits and losses for their business is significant. Cans can pose similar issues with metal. Problems will occur, and our history with detecting foreign material contamination shows that even the best inline technology and processes cannot catch it all. At FlexXray, we are the best in the business at catching foreign material contaminants through our proprietary inspection process.

Packaging

While packaging processes pose their own risks for added foreign material contamination, the greatest challenge of packaging is that it can inhibit your ability to use in-house technology and processes to identify contaminated products after they have been bundled. Fortunately, FlexXray uses equipment and processes to inspect completed products and even expertly rebundle products as needed.

As with everything we do, FlexXray goes further in tackling problems with canned and bottled goods. In addition to our industry-defining foreign material hold resolution services, we also provide can and jar dud detection services using tap tone technology. If you have an issue with your canned and bottled goods packaging, FlexXray can find that, too.

Your brand reputation and your bottom line are at stake with every product you ship to stores. Attempting to inspect finished product in a way that doesn’t conform to your in-house processes and technologies wastes labor resources and production time. Disposing of product that can’t be cleared due to suspected foreign material contamination wastes production costs and increases food waste. Ignoring the problem of foreign material contamination risks your bottom line and your brand reputation.

FlexXray exists to change the way food manufacturing does business. We’re an added, invaluable layer for your HACCP plan that can help you meet quotas and protect your customers. We can protect your bottom line and your brand reputation. Our advanced technology and custom processes can detect materials like stone, metal, bone, plastic, glass, ceramic and more down to 0.8 mm or smaller. We provide a detailed report of findings to aid in traceability of issues at your plant. In 2020 alone, we helped our customers salvage 96% of their product for sale to customers.

For more information on partnering with FlexXray, give us a call at 817-803-2659.