UK magazine “Industry Update” selected Engilico as “Company of the Month”. The main reason for this selection was the recently granted prize at the All4Pack tradeshow in Paris, where Engilico received for HyperScope, its latest hyperspectral seal inspection system the prestigious Innovative Technology Award.
Industry Update is delighted to welcome back Engilico as our “Company of the Month” after previously winning INU’s Company of the Year in 2020. This multi-award-winning packaging solutions company is based in Belgium with offices in Germany and the USA. In 2021 Engilico was acquired by the Japanese PACRAFT packaging company (part of the larger industrial group Nabtesco) expanding the customer base to a global market.
Renaat van Cauter, Marketing Director details the company’s services: “Engilico (Rotselaar, Belgium) delivers innovative technologies to inspect, monitor and optimise the sealing process of flexible and rigid packaging. These technologies enable customers to obtain better quality packaging, higher packaging productivity and end-of-line automation. Our customers are packaging a wide variety of products such as perishable foods, ready-food, cereals, snacks, herbs, powders, but also pet food and wet wipes.”
In November 2022 Engilico won the coveted Innovation Technology Award for its HyperScope® system at the ALL4PACK 2022 Emballage in Paris November. The device inspects seals on plastic or cardboard trays, pots and other thermoformed packages. This state-of-the art system combines hyperspectral imaging and artificial intelligence to detect seal contamination. The ingenious design can detect seal area independent of packaging orientation, material, layout or size. Renaat explains the precision nature of the system:
“HyperScope® is based on innovative, hyperspectral imaging. This goes beyond standard vision systems since HyperScope® identifies seal contamination via the detection of chemical differences through the measured light resulting in a higher contrast. Whereas standard vision cameras typically look at color differences in visible light, hyperspectral cameras may cover a broader wavelength range from visible to near-infrared, looking simultaneously at multiple wavelengths. This precision technology can separate different materials such as fat, meat, oil, water and can even see through, printed foil. Because this enhanced vision system ‘sees’ material differences it can e.g. detect yellow cheese, camouflaged under a yellow cover.”
Engilico is committed to sustainable development and the HyperScope® can detect contamination within non-plastic packaging such as opaque cardboard backing or containers using a light source and camera placed directly above.
This precision technology targets seal integrity to give the food industry peace of mind with food producers and distribution companies needing to adhere to strict industry food hygiene regulations across all their products. Problematic sealing can lead to leakage and result in reduced shelf life, food bacteria such as salmonella or E.coli and expensive product recalls. This can lead to serious brand damaging consequences for companies. Engilico can prevent these costly, damaging risks for companies through specialist in-line seal inspections on all manner of packaging from the more rigid tray, pot or thermoformed packaging through to flexible pouch, bag or flow-wrap styles. Renaat explains how the SealScope® works with flexible packaging:
“SealScope®, our solution for seal inspection of flexible packaging is an in-line, non-destructive, full-proof inspection and monitoring tool. It instantly rejects packaging with seal defects providing continuous feedback. The main benefit is that it enables customers to realize a better outgoing packaging quality and higher packaging productivity. Traditional seal integrity is often sample based with a manual process that is slow to highlight production issues. SealScope® is machine-brand independent and can be retrofitted to a wide range of packaging machines from brands such as PACRAFT, Fuji, Omori, GEA, Ulma, UVA and many more.”