30 years on, how have food safety and inspection evolved – and where next?

Fortress Technology reflects on changes across three decades, from operator-heavy facilities to the rise of intelligent and integrated plants. ~

When company founder and president Steve Gidman set up the business in 1996, food production was predominantly a high-touch environment. “A typical packaging line often required between 10 to 15 operators to closely monitor equipment and make manual adjustments to inspection equipment settings,” he recalls. “In this era, metal detection was largely reactive rather than proactive. Attention was only really directed to inspection machines if an alarm sounded or the production line stopped.”

Comprehensive food safety regulations had not yet been implemented, with the Food Standards Act (2000), the setting up of the European Food Safety Authority (EFSA) in 2002 and the US Food Safety Modernization Act (2011) all still to come.

‘Feature creep’ was rampant. “Engineers frequently loaded machines with complex interfaces that looked impressive on a spec sheet but baffled operators on the floor,” Gidman says. A transformation has taken place. “Modern plants are defined by high-speed automation, with machines processing 200 to 300 packs per minute and requiring minimal human intervention,” he points out.  In this new – and future – landscape, the metal detector transitions from being a standalone hardware requirement to a sophisticated, data-driven partner essential for brand protection, says Fortress.

Back in 1996, staff might calibrate a machine and perform tests manually. “Now, fewer employees are expected to manage more high-priority systems. On a high-speed line, asking an employee to manually insert and retrieve test pieces is a liability risk and inefficient,” he says.

This need to mitigate safety risks and minimise human errors helped shape the development of the company’s Halo automatic testing system.

Gidman believes the most profound change over the last 30 years is less in the hardware and more in the cultural mindset adopted by food manufacturers.

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