Stopping disruption in seafood processing
batch of metal detectors from UK company Lock Inspection Systems,
the processor announced on Thursday. 'Wet' products, such as fresh
fish, have traditionally been problematic for most metal detectors
as moisture can cause equipment to trigger frequent false alarms,
resulting in disruption to production.
UK seafood processor Youngs Bluecrest Seafoods is to start using a metal detector from UK company Lock Inspection Systems, the processor announced on Thursday.
Lock Inspection Systems' MET 30+ metal detectors were chosen for Youngs Bluecrest Seafoods' Marsden Road factory in Grimsby, UK. A leading seafood manufacturer, Youngs Bluecrest produces around 500,000 retail packs of fish and over 10,000 bulk cases per week at the facility.
According to a statement, the company was looking for new machines to replace its existing metal detectors, which were dated in construction and inconsistent in performance. Youngs has since asked Lock Inspection Systems to supply a total of five MET 30+ machines.
The five installed stainless steel units are able to achieve the required line speeds of 50 packs per minute and the product reject check ensures the failsafe transfer of contaminated products into the reject bin. This operates via a confirmation sensor which will stop the detector if a product fails to pass the PEC (Photo Electrical Cell) mounted inside the bin.
The detector supplier writes this week that 'wet' products such as fresh fish have traditionally been problematic for most metal detectors as moisture can cause equipment to trigger frequent false alarms, resulting in disruption to production. By recording the profile of conductive products, Lock's MET 30+ automatically tunes the detector head to recognise the presence of metal contaminants, so countering this problem.
"We were already very pleased with the performance of the existing Lock unit installed in our Grimsby plant, so when it came to replacing old units, Lock was the obvious choice," said Mark Thompson, engineering supervisor at Youngs Bluecrest.
Lock, recently awarded the ISO 9002 quality accreditation, supplies metal detection and checkweighing equipment to manufacturers in the food and pharmaceutical industries worldwide.
