Safeway Fresh Foods, a Vineland, N.J.-based family-owned processor of healthy ready-to-eat snacks and meals, goes to market under the Sunnyside Farms brand and customers’ private labels. Behind their motto, “Your brand integrity is safe with us,” is an unwavering commitment to high-quality product and food safety at every step of the operation. That’s why Safeway Fresh Foods relies on equipment from the Mettler-Toledo Product Inspection Group, Tampa, Fla., for all nine of their production lines (eight Safeline metal detectors, a Safeline x-ray inspection system and three Hi-Speed checkweighers).
“During my 40-year career, I’ve had the opportunity to use metal detectors and checkweighers from many different suppliers. When I landed with Mettler-Toledo, I decided to stay with them,” says Sal Tedesco, co-owner of Safeway Fresh Foods. “Their equipment is very dependable and easy to maintain. We’ve had great success with them despite our hostile environment. It’s cold and wet during production; then we subject these machines to a rigorous sanitation routine that includes a caustic hot water washdown. Despite our challenging environment, this inspection equipment is pain-free.”
Safeway uses Signature Touch metal detectors to find ferrous and non-ferrous tramp metal and the most difficult-to-detect, non-magnetic stainless-steel fragments and non-spherical fine wire contaminants. Featuring high-frequency advanced detection coil technology and dynamic filtering techniques, these metal detectors maximize detection sensitivity while inspecting Safeway’s many products that go to convenience stores, supermarkets, club stores, quick-service restaurants and more.
“It’s critical that the metal detectors maintain their high sensitivity despite big changes in the size of the package and the nature of the product. This sensitivity is the difference between finding something and not finding something that could break a tooth or lacerate a mouth,” adds Tedesco. “Customer safety is our highest priority and the driving force for choosing Mettler-Toledo’s inspection equipment.
To ensure constant detection sensitivity, every metal detector is tested at the beginning of each shift and periodically during every production run.
“The dependability of these metal detectors is excellent,” says Tedesco. “I can’t remember a single Mettler-Toledo machine coming offline due to a malfunction.”
Safeway installed a Certus x-ray system from Mettler-Toledo Safeline to inspect 5-pound bulk packages of protein-based salads such as chicken salad, tuna salad, egg salad and more.