Industry: Protein
Product: 12 oz. Retail Plant-Based Beef Bricks
Error: Packaging and Labeling Error
The Challenge
When two production lines feed into a single case-packing station, the margin for error is thin. For one frozen food manufacturer, the nightmare scenario came about when the wrong film backing got integrated into the line — and 12 oz. bricks of plant-based beef that were supposed to be retail-ready came out packaged as restaurant-grade product instead.
Retail packaging requires specific markings that don’t apply to restaurant product. By the time anyone caught the quality issue, five truckloads were already finished, already frozen, and already sitting in a distribution center waiting for disposition.
Fixing the issue internally wasn’t realistic. Pulling employees off to hand-sort 37 pallets of frozen product would have meant stopping their line entirely. They also didn’t have the cold storage capacity to hold that volume while a rework project took place.
What they needed was an external partner with the facility, the staff, and the equipment to receive the product, keep it frozen, and work through it quickly. Because FlexXray had been doing foreign material inspections for this producer for years, and had worked alongside their team on improving their internal detection procedures, they already knew who to call.
The Solution
FlexXray got to work as soon as the first truck arrived, separating retail-labeled product from anything marked “not for retail sale” lot by lot. It wasn’t long before we discovered something that hadn’t come up in the initial conversation — a portion of the retail units weren’t just carrying the wrong packaging film, they were missing their nutritional labels entirely.
We notified the manufacturer about the issue, came up with a plan to fix it, and kept moving — inspecting one truckload per day and completing the full five-truck job in just one week.
Plus: nothing went to the landfill.
Of the 180,000+ pounds of product that we inspected, 66% worth over $290,000 were sorted out as correctly labeled and retail-ready, and went back into commerce. The product that couldn’t be cleared for retail didn’t go to a landfill — the manufacturer had made that priority clear from the start and donated to local food banks instead, which kept a significant volume of good product from going to waste.
Labeling defects aren’t events you can plan for in advance. But, they’re much easier to navigate when you have a partner who knows your product and can move quickly. This manufacturer kept their production lines running while we handled the rest.
FlexXray provides food repacking, relabeling, and rebundling services alongside X-ray inspection, CT scanning, and contaminant retrieval for manufacturers across food, beverage, and consumer goods industries. Learn more about our repacking and relabeling services or contact us here.
About the Author
Paula Schwarz, Senior Director of Sales and Key Accounts
As the Senior Director of Sales and Key Accounts at FlexXray, Paula Schwarz brings over 20 years of experience in food safety and quality leadership. She oversees our sales team in providing industry-leading foreign material inspection solutions, helping food manufacturers strengthen their foreign material inspection programs. Throughout her career, she has worked alongside industry leaders in food service and meat processing, pioneering innovative strategies that drive productivity and ensure excellence in service delivery.
