Case Study: Crofters Foods Chooses Vision Inspection to Verify Label Quality

In 2016, the company built the new Greenfield manufacturing plant in Seguin, Ontario, which included state-of-the-art technologies and packaging systems to cement its position as a market leader. "We now produce over 170 different SKUs at both the new facility and our original smaller plant in Parry Sound," Latka explains. The facility can pack up to 150,000 jars of product per shift, depending on product and container sizes.

“We invested heavily into top-quality, automated production and packaging equipment to optimize efficiencies and to increase line speeds," says Latka. This enabled the company to triple its production capacity and enabled processing of larger jars for new customers.

After adding advanced facility upgrades, including a checkweigher and laser-based product coding, the team implemented a new enterprise-wide SCADA (supervisory control and data acquisition) software for real-time monitoring, gathering and processing of all the production data generated by the plant's operations.

The vision systems can also be integrated with the ProdX data management solution from METTLER TOLEDO, so that the plant management can have real time access to what is exactly happening on the line at any given moment. This extra data collection capability is an especially attractive feature for Latka, who says the company already makes good use of the "tremendous" amount of data generated by the inline checkweigher from METTLER TOLEDO, which was installed on the new line about a year ago.

"The checkweigher from METTLER TOLEDO makes sure that every single unit going down the conveying line for shipment gets weighed to determine the exact fill weight that will meet both Canadian and U.S. guidelines for what constitutes proper fill weight," Latka says. "By checking every unit thoroughly, the checkweigher also generates a tremendous amount of data that we can use to optimize our average fills upstream in the production process."

In addition to the checkweigher and vision systems, the Seguin plant also uses a metal detection system from METTLER TOLEDO to inspect the bulk product before it makes its way to the filling stations to help ensure optimal food safety and quality control at that critical stage.

"We also have a metal detector from METTLER TOLEDO at the original smaller facility, which has held up extremely well under very stressful high-speed, high moisture conditions for many years to help us maintain our high product quality and protect our brand reputation. We buy our key raw ingredients worldwide so we must be ready for anything," says Latka, explaining that all the data related to incoming products is also entered into the plant's product management system and, ultimately, transferred to final QR code appearing in the product label.