Country Reports - France

Fruit Gourmet Leaves Nothing to Chance with Ishida X-Ray

May 2017

Country Reports - France

Fruit Gourmet Leaves Nothing to Chance with Ishida X-Ray

May 2017

Fruit specialist Fruit Gourmet has selected an X-ray inspection system from Ishida Europe for enhanced quality control. The decision to install the machine follows the success of multihead weighers at the site. Fruit Gourmet supplies a variety of fruits including prunes, apricots, figs, grapes, mangoes, strawberries, raspberries, apples, blueberries, bananas and cranberries, sold to the consumer as cooking ingredients and as healthy snacks, packed in bags as well in bulk. The IX-GA-2475 X-ray model is being used for the inspection of bulk streams of the fruit pieces. Because of careful supplier selection and long processing experience, products such as Fruit Gourmet's shredded apricot rarely contain contaminants. However, the X-ray inspection system, already highly sensitive, can be set to even higher levels of sensitivity for the contaminants that have historically been known to occur in such agricultural products, such as minute particles of glass, stone or buckshot. One aspect that particularly appealed to the French manufacturer was the Ishida's evolutionary image processing software which enables the operator, without any special training, to automatically generate the optimal sensitivity setting for each inspected product. Hygiene was another factor, with the IX-GA's design practically eliminating areas in which product can build up. The adoption of X-ray technology continues the company's relationship with Ishida, which began in 2014 when it was decided to create a new packing line for bagged products with target weights of 50 to 500g.