Food & Beverage

In the manufacturing process of foodstuffs it is necessary for the food to come in contact with machined parts.  Many of these parts are or can be made from plastics.  In the processing and transport of foodstuffs, slide rails, conveyors components, scrapers, mixer and filling equipment are just a sample of the applications that are often made from plastic materials.  However, most critical to the food processing market is safety to the consumer.  Within the concern for safety is the need to detect any plastic particle that could contaminate the foodstuff during processing or transport.  Thus, materials have been developed to be detectable by the equipment common to food processing.  There are three levels of detectability available in food grade products:

• Single Detectable – Blue color used to ease the visual detectability if a piece of the plastic breaks during the process
• Dual Detectable – Plastics that incorporate additives to make the material detectable by standard metal detectors. It is often combined with the blue color to offer a dual detectable material
• Tri Detectable – The newest technology in Food grade plastics adds X-Ray detectability to Metal Detectability (MD) and visual detectability. Materials have increased density levels to make materials detectable by use of X-Ray equipment.

Plastics offer benefits in terms of cost, noise reduction, wear and functionality when compared to the often used stainless steel.  The detectability incorporated into plastics opens limitless opportunities to use plastics to enhance performance & reduce cost while using the detection systems developed for stainless steel.