Plastics in the production of pizza, bread, etc.

The overwhelming majority of our food is produced using industrial equipment. This means that pizzas, chicken wings and baked goods go through various production steps on complex machinery. Defects in this machinery can cause the food to become inadvertently contaminated with metal parts, for instance. If these are not discovered, the health of consumers may be put at risk and products may need to be recalled. With its SUSTARIN® C MDT and Polystone® M MDT materials, Röchling offers plastics that can also be traced with the usual metal detectors.

The effects of food product recalls can be both very costly and extremely unpleasant for a producer, including possible damage to health, claims for compensation and high costs of product recalls, bad publicity and, not least, a loss of customers. To prevent this, metal detectors are used in production lines. They can detect any contamination of the food with metal parts.

From pizzas to chocolate bars

Plastics are now part and parcel of production facilities in the food industry. They are used for all kinds of product, from pizzas through baked goods, poultry and meat to sweets. Because food producers cannot make any compromises when it comes to the quality of their products, the feasibility of plastics that can be detected with the existing metal detectors was explored.

Detectors detect plastics

In SUSTARIN® C MDT (POM C) and Polystone® M MDT (PE-UHMW), Röchling markets plastics that can be identified by metal detectors. In addition, Röchling is one of the first manufacturers in the world to offer industrial plastics – Polystone® M XDT (PE-UHMW), SUSTARIN® C XDT (POM-C) and SUSTAPEEK XDT (PEEK) – that have been developed specially for detection by x-ray in the food industry. Patents for the XDT products are pending.