METTLER TOLEDO is offering precision instruments and services for many applications in R&D, quality control, production, logistics and retail to customers around the world.
Mr Siddharth Kachroo Business Manager – Product Inspection & Global Key Accounts at Mettler Toledo India Pvt Limited. Mr. Kachroo an email interaction with www.foodprocessingbazaar.com (Future Today Media Group) reveals the current scenario in the Indian market and outlook for his company Excerpts.
Q: What are the dynamic changes that have taken place in the food and beverage industry in India and globally following the Covid-19 pandemic?
A: Post-pandemic, we have seen a boost in opportunities linked directly to an increase in consumption. This has also resulted in Indian food brands having a stronger presence across all marketing channels (online and offline), and increased affordability (the adoption in the rural market is picking up). Meanwhile, the Government of India has prohibited the sale of certain products in bulk and the general public has become more aware that packaged products should be bought to avoid contamination. These trends are here to stay and most of the FMCG companies have started to focus on these opportunities. Companies are paying more attention to automation as a way to increase productivity/efficiency and reduce human intervention. All of these trends will lead to an increase in overall production, an improvement in efficiency and a reduction in wastage/overfill. This in turn will call for more inline, high speed, reliable and repeatable product inspection equipment.
Q: How is the foreign object detection performance of these systems measured?
A: Rigorous and regular testing of the product inspection equipment is the key, to ensure that it is continually operating within the parameters required to maintain food safety standards. Food manufacturers should establish good testing guidelines at the start. They should ensure that their staff understand what is required and are able to perform suitable tests, using appropriate test samples and within suitable intervals of time. Accurate and easily accessible records of testing activity must be kept and maintained. These records can be saved from the device onto a USB flash drive or transferred via a network, but the most proven method for documenting the test data is electronic storage such as Mettler-Toledo’sProdX™ software. This helps to avoid operating errors and alsoensures that all test steps are completed. In addition, the data records can be called up effortlessly during audits.
Q: What has been the company’s efforts to tap the India market and in what areas?
A: For our Indian customers, and indeed customers across Asia-Pacific, we also have a regional test centre in Malaysia. Here, customers can take advantage of our free “Test Before You Invest” service, in which packaged food products can be evaluated for a range of product inspection considerations, including contaminant detection and check weighing, helping them to choose the right product inspection technology for their production lines. We take care of all the shipment requirements of the test products from our customers manufacturing facilities to our Malaysian Test Centre including all customs declarations forms etc. These test centres are part of a global network that also includes centres in China, US and Spain.
Q: Are you happy with the regulation of the government for this industry?
A: The Government of India has invested heavily in the Food Safety and Standards Authority of India (FSSAI) initiatives and is focused on continuously improving food safety compliance in the country. We are happy with the progress the FSSAI is making in further improving compliance. The FSSAI actively engages with manufacturers and seeks their input. As an emerging country, India is witnessing a growth in domestic demand as well as exports of packaged food products. This means that the food safety landscape will also change. We believe that it is a journey that needs to be taken by the FSSAI together with F&B manufacturers and technology partners like us.
Q: What challenges are there in the F&B sector, not just in India, but globally too?
- Food Safety: Food safety is gaining high importance among food manufacturers. We see new and additional resources being deployed by food processors to comply with local and/or global food safety norms. With the increase in outsourcing, most of the e-commerce players are setting up in-house food safety departments for their own labels. To safeguard and enhance their brand image, and to ensure the availability of safe food to consumers, companies are also formulating their own food safety guidelines.
- Traceability: Around the world, traceability of food and beverage products is a growing requirement, and the answer will come from digitalization of the food supply chain. It is a constant pursuit of better safety standards and fewer product recalls. Through digitalization, food and beverage manufacturers can also realize greater operational efficiencies.
To help our customers take advantage of this trend, we have recently entered into a strategic partnership with EVRYTHNG, the cloud-based “Product Cloud” platform, with whom we are working to further the digitalization of the food safety space by integrating real-time data collection from our product inspection systems into the platform. This will enable enhanced transparency and traceability of food products, as well as more informed decision-making, greater automation and reduced operating costs for food manufacturers.
Food manufacturers are looking for inspection equipment that can provide them with reliability and repeatability, as well as helping them achieve digitalization. As a relatively new technology, x-ray inspection systems are gaining importance for those applications which require detection of a wide range of contaminants, plus for those needing packaging and product integrity checks to be simultaneously completed.
As mentioned above, with the growth in both domestic demand and exports of packaged food products, the food safety landscape in India is changing, and the FSSAI, F&B manufacturers and technology partners such as Mettler-Toledo must take this journey together. We believe good progress is being made on improving food safety compliance by FSSAI, through heavy investment by the Government.
Q: How different is your technology from other suppliers?
A: We have observed that space is becoming a premium for food manufacturers, and in recognition of this we have launched a new product inspection combination system for harsh washdown environments. The Mettler-Toledo CM33 Washdown and CM35 Washdown combination systems combine checkweighing and metal detection, and are aimed at manufacturers of packaged food products, including dairy and meat products, who require a quick-cleaning, advanced contaminant detection and precision weighing solution.
Also, there is the X34 series of x-ray detection systems, that offer precise detection of small contaminants. The enhanced detection sensitivity of these systems helps improve product safety, with minimal false reject rates. They also offer productivity, reduced downtime and ease of use through aspects such as automated set-up.
Q: What is the USP of your machines? What makes you stand out in the competition?
A: Across our entire product range – spanning areas such as checkweighing, x-ray, metal detection and vision inspection – we strive to give customers best-in-class technology that, whatever the application, helps to enhance food safety and compliance, makes them more efficient and enables progress towards digital track and trace capabilities.
Given the breadth of our product inspection offering there are obviously many different aspects that help us to stand out in each different field. A great example comes in checkweighing though: we recently launched our FlashCellTM Load Cell technology, providing higher productivity and faster throughput than other checkweighing systems currently on the market. Our checkweighers are able to operate at an impressive throughput of up to 800ppm, which is around 200ppm faster than most competitive solutions on the market. Just as importantly, it can provide this level of throughput without compromising the precision of its weighing performance and is also capable of operating in harsh environments.
Q: What is the importance of food safety in the food processing industry?
A: Currently food safety is in good hands with the FSSAI, who have been working effectively for many years to expedite and ease the manufacturing approval processes without compromising on food safety laws. Not only have the FSSAI been supporting the industry, but they have also improved awareness amongst the general public of food safety and legal metrology laws. They have been actively working alongside industry leaders in setting up new benchmarks in food safety (biological, chemical and physical contamination) and legal metrology laws for packaged food products.
Manufacturers in the food industry can exceed regulatory requirements by further ramping up their quality management programmes, conducting periodic audits and testing, and setting benchmarks higher than those prescribed by the regulatory framework. Also, the industry can support regulatory bodies by training auditors on the latest food manufacturing practices/equipment/trends.
Q: Brief us about the new types of food safety and control measures being adopted in the food industry (metal detectors, X-rays and screenings)
A: In response to the increasing importance of food safety, many food manufacturers are formulating their own food safety guidelines that will enable them to comply with local and/or global food safety regulations, protect their own brands and ensure the availability of safe food to consumers.
Food manufacturers need product inspection equipment that can provide them with reliability and repeatability, and help them implement a digital supply chain, and this is exactly what the latest Mettler-Toledo systems deliver. A technology such as x-ray inspection is able to detect a wide range of contaminants, as well as carrying out packaging and product integrity checks simultaneously.
For those food manufacturers with limited factory floor space our new product inspection combination systems, combining metal detection and checkweighing, are a possible solution.Facilitieswhere stringent washdown processes are required, such as in dairy and meat, can benefit from quick cleaning, advanced contaminant detection and precision weighing in a single device through systems such as Mettler-Toledo’s CM33 Washdown and CM35 Washdown combination machines.
Q: Please tell us about your after-sales services.
A: Mettler-Toledo is a technology partner for most food companies globally, both large and small brands, and we work with them to set up their food safety parameters in terms of foreign body contamination detection programmes. Mettler-Toledo has been present in India for more than 20 years and has developed capabilities in pre-sales consulting, engineering and post-sales support. Since we are mostly in the business of “End of Line Inspection Equipment” (though we do also have inline solutions), we are sensitive to the need for prompt customer support. We have two state-of-the-art competence centres in Mumbai for customer training, product testing and in-house competence enhancement of our sales and service teams. We have a network of well-trained service engineers who are located near most of the industrial clusters. The engineers are backed by an in-house technical support team. All customer service requests are managed centrally through a modern call management system based upon SAP. We invest a significant effort in training our customers so that they can deploy our equipment optimally.
Q: What is your strategy for 2022 growth?
A: We continue to work closely with our customers to help them comply with their quality management programmes. Our customers see us as a reliable and knowledgeable partner. This strength of ours is a key differentiator in our business. We invest a lot of effort in educating the industry to not only be more compliant but also to keep improving productivity and efficiency. This is backed by significant investments in our people, both in terms of their own competence and their availability to share their knowledge with our customers.
With increasing demand for digitalization, Mettler-Toledo has been investing significantly in Industry 4.0. Most of our equipment is Industry 4.0-ready and can be integrated with any of the MES systems. Earlier this year, we released a new major software update (Version 2.4) of ProdX™, our product inspection management software. With enhanced security features, digital track and trace, automatic performance testing and real-time logging of test and compliance data, ProdX™ delivers full digital track and trace and real-time food safety compliance.
