Nutradried Creations uses Sesotec X-ray Inspection System
It‘s exciting when a company sees an opportunity for growth. The lure of new markets, better ways to provide new and improved products, and the chance to spread its mission and benefit more customers, add up to a compelling corporate vision. In the food industry, that opportunity also comes with new challenges -- both market-based and regulatory.
CUSTOMER NUTRADRIED CREATIONS
Nutradried Creations is a Blaine, Washington-based leader that uses state-of-the-art technology to create shelf stable, healthy snacks derived from natural, whole foods. As a company, it boasts a track record that demonstrates it is about more than turning a profit.
Nutradried Creations has a compelling, simple mission statement: Nutradried Creations’ purpose and mission is to
create a Triple Bottom Line – impacting people’s lives and bringing profit to shareholders – through social business by selling environmentally and socially responsible products that will ensure that the customer receives the best nutritional products possible, through the innovative use of our patented process and strategic relationships.
For example, it partners with organizations like Agros International, a Seattle-based nonprofit that assists poor, rural farmers in purchasing their own land through low-interest or interest-free loans. This helps these farmers break out of their generational poverty cycle. By only purchasing ethical ingredients that are fairly traded, Nutradried also partners with its customer to
provide a fair wage for a beautiful product. This helps to enable farmers to provide food, clothing, shelter, and an education for their children. The achievements are impressive. With Agros, Nutradried Creations helped develop 42 villages, aiding 24,000 farmers and fostering generational change. It is now doing similar work in Ethiopia by supporting dairies that feed orphanages and provide economic opportunity for their local communities. To help achieve these and other goals, the company needs vendors it can trust to help it on the operation and processing side.
THE HACCP CHALLENGE
In addition to new customer expectations, Nutradried Creations must also comply with a higher compliance bar raised by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) in the past several years. Perhaps the most significant are the much tougher Hazard Analysis and Critical Control Points (HACCP) requirements. When an inspector comes calling at your food processing facility, they expect to find strong evidence that you have completed a hazard analysis, and have a plan that includes, identified critical control points (CCPs), and the limits for each CCP; as well as introduced CCP monitoring processes, procedures and corrective actions, ensuring your HACCP system functions as intended.
Of these, FDA warning letters have tended to most often focus on corrective actions. The final rule requires a plant‘s HACCP plan to identify the corrective actions to be taken if a critical limit is not met. Corrective actions are intended to ensure that no product leaves the facility that has been adulterated or is dangerous to human health.
Sesotec’s solution is HACCP, BRC, and IFS compliant.
THE GOAL
“We needed to provide our customers with the absolute security that the products we make for them are safe with no foreign contaminants“ says Nutradried Creations Plant Manager Phil Fraley. That‘s especially important for a company with a higher calling to help the economically disadvantaged.
Working with Sesotec also gives Nutradried Creations more confidence when preparing for a customer audit. “We want to be ready,“ Phil said. “We want our customers to have confidence in doing business with us.“
THE SEARCH
Phil‘s team evaluated nine different X-ray suppliers. “We spent about twelve hours going through the capabilities for each,“ he adds. Ultimately, many things set Sesotec apart from the pack, but Phil cites one example: A commitment to quality training.
“Sesotec included quality training in their fees and provided us with a great machine,“ Phil said. Competitors wanted to charge up to $5,000 to provide training, he added. He spent about four hours putting together spreadsheets and presented the Nutradried Creations‘ owners with the recommendation to go with Sesotec RAYCON Technology.
X-RAY INSPECTION SYSTEM RAYCON
In addition to metal, RAYCON product inspection systems can complete more advanced product analysis to detect contaminants, other systems might miss. Glass, ceramic, stone and bone in food can be problematic for an inadequate system. The RAYCON will detect high density plastics such as PVC and natural rubber, as well as identify other product defects including cracks, missing components and underweight products.
In addition, packaging components such as aluminum clips on sausage chubs or aluminum pie plates can be masked out as needed. RAYCON’s unique edge filter technology will analyze dense packaging edges in metal cans or carton walls, compensate for them; but still find foreign material at these edges. So 100% package inspection is always taking place with the RAYCON. Users like Nutradried Creations can operate with confidence with this kind of support.
RAYCON‘s innovative software also delivers a number of advantages. The use of real-time, solid-state flash memory, means no longer having to account for error-prone spinning hard drives. A Linux operating system - known the world over as a very robust industrial platform - allows for the full processing horsepower of a dedicated image analysis computer to find the smallest foreign material in food products. Finally, the electronic design is modular and rugged; no UPS is required for system protection, and access is easy, for lower cost of ownership.
THE FUTURE
Because of its partnership with Sesotec, Phil says the company will now be able to pursue larger partners, including private labels. “This represents a potentially big growth opportunity for Nutradried Creations,“ Phil stressed. “We benefit from working with partners who share our commitment to doing things well and doing them right.“
Phil and the team at Nutradried Creations remain committed to providing high-quality products that benefit people all over the globe. Working with a partner like Sesotec, they are confident they‘ll achieve their worthy goals.
Nutradried Creations is a company full of dedicated, visionary professionals who firmly believe that getting also means giving. It‘s understandably proud of all that it has achieved by providing quality food inextricably linked with fair treatment of farmers and others in the production and delivery chain, but now it‘s hungry for more. At Nutradried Creations, the future is now.
