
Flanders Food Productions specializes in processing and packaging of cheese. Its main activity consists of slicing, grating and packaging a wide range of cheeses and cheese variations. The full range of products is supplied in a variety of packaging formats ranging from retail packaging to industrial bulk packaging.
Flanders Food Productions (F.F.P. in Lommel, Belgium) focuses strongly on quality, which is intensively monitored throughout the entire production line. All incoming products are subjected to a strict entry control. The products are processed and packaged according to strict working instructions with corresponding production quality checks (temperature, metal detection, gas composition, residual oxygen, seal inspection quality, etc.).
Specifically for its sliced cheese packaging line, F.F.P. has recently invested in an in-line SealScope® inspection system to check the quality of the seals.
Ben Verheyen, technical project manager of F.F.P. explains: “Since the cheese is packaged under modified atmospheric conditions to ensure its shelf life, quality control of the sealing is of great importance to detect open or leaking packaging.”
The innovative SealScope® system verifies, by means of sensors mounted on the sealing bars, whether there are plies, folds or product in the sealing area, which could lead to open or leaking packages. 100% of the production is thus automatically verified and, if defective seals are detected, an ejection system removes the cheese packages from the conveyor belt.
“At F.F.P., the SealScope® system is retrofitted on an OMORI flow-pack machine. “, concludes Peter Nijs, CTO Engilico, “In general, SealScope® is used for seal inspection of different flexible packages such as pouches, VFFS bags or flow packs and is independent from the brand of packaging machine.”