Food Quality & Safety New Products: April/May 2022

Autoclavable Paddle Blender Bag

Seward has launched the Stomacher 3500 autoclavable paddle blender bag. Its material composition makes the new autoclavable bag the first paddle blender bag that can survive irradiation, stomaching, and the autoclave disposal cycle without losing its integrity. The bag prevents bursting and spillages after autoclaving, ensuring the contents can be disposed of where and when intended, rather than being accidentally dumped onto the floor. The single chamber autoclavable bags are ideal for sample sizes ranging from 400-4,500 mL and irradiated sterile for use in laboratory blenders. They are available in packs of 250 in five sachets of 50 and sterility assured and made from food-grade materials and suitable for all microbiological applications. The bag’s wide range of applications also includes small batch media preparation, which can then be sterilized in an autoclave. Seward, seward.co.uk.

Cutting Tool

IMA Dairy & Food USA has made enhancements to the cutting tools used for its recently introduced ZERO Technology, which helps food brands easily use sustainable monomaterial cup packages. Highlighted by an extractable central cutting unit (CCU) design, the innovation drastically reduces production downtime for change-outs, minimizes spare part costs, and raises the number of punches between sharpenings. Ideally suited to IMA’s Erca, Hassia, and Intecma brands of form-fill-seal (FFS) machines, the technology uses a punch process to provide cutting and pre-cutting of eco-conscious materials such as PET, PP, and PLA. The enhanced cutting tools overcome other longstanding obstacles: production downtime and cost of ownership. By using an interchangeable cutting elements setup that allows individual tools components to be expediently replaced onsite, line stoppage can be reduced to 20 minutes. IMA Dairy & Food, imadairyfood.com.

Checkweigher for Packaged Foods

The Raptor Checkweigher series from Fortress Technology Ltd. is now available for North American food producers. The system helps food manufacturers meet legislative weight requirements and targets operational inefficiencies, including upstream product giveaway, non-conforming food packs and packaging waste. The regular system and its XL version have modular electronics, which allows them to be integrated with a Fortress metal detector and upstream packaging equipment. The series also features an HMI touchscreen panel, which can be pre-programmed to calibrate numerous SKUs. Fortress Technology, Ltd., fortresstechnologies.com.

Wastewater Monitoring System

Food processing plants require large amounts of water for washing, rinsing, cooking, disinfecting, bottling, canning, and packaging, and both incoming and discharged water must be treated to ensure product quality and environmental safety. To help food facility water and wastewater system operators conveniently monitor equipment and environmental conditions, Sensaphone has released the cloud-based Sentinel PRO system with supporting

iPhone/Android applications. The system interfaces with any water or wastewater processing equipment that uses a PLC with Modbus sensors and can read values over 2-wire RS485 or Ethernet/TCP. The system immediately notifies users when sensor readings move outside of preset parameters, which can indicate potential threats to pumps and systems. The system sends alerts via text, email, or phone call. Users can view data values in real time, set alarms, acknowledge alerts, review data, and generate reports from their mobile device, tablet, or computer. Sensaphone, sensaphone.com.