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 Sanjeev Kumar Kapoor is Mettler-Toledo’s Head of Industrial and Product Inspection Businesses in India as well as Head of Marketing for all divisions in India. He has a background in Electronics and Telecommunications engineering, augmented with marketing qualifications, and has worked for Mettler-Toledo for 22 years, previously managing Service and Supply Chain Operations for the company. Mr. Kapoor Head of Marketing for all divisions in India of, Mettler-Toledo’s in 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.
QTell us about Mettler-Toledo
ANS: Mettler-Toledo is a leading global manufacturer of precision instruments and a service provider. The company ranks highly in a number of market segments and is a global market leader in many areas. Mettler-Toledois the largest provider of weighing systems and analysis instruments for use in production areas, laboratories and in-line measurement within demanding industrial and food production processes.
Q: Please throw some light on its manufacturing facilities and product portfolio.
ANS: The Product Inspection division of Mettler-Toledo is one of the leading providers within the field of automated inspection technology. The division includes the following brands: Safeline metal and X-ray inspection, Garvens and Hi-Speed checkweighers, CI-Vision and PCE Track & Trace, and ProdX™ data management software. The product inspection solutions improve manufacturers’ process efficiency and help them comply with industry standards and regulations. Mettler-Toledo systems ensure consistently high product quality, helping protect both consumers as well as the reputation of manufacturers and their products and brands.
Q: What is the importance of food safety in food processing industry?
ANS: Currently food safety is in good hands with the Food Safety and Standards Authority of India (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: At what capacity, research is important for food safety machinery manufacturers?
ANS:Naturally, research is critical in developing and manufacturing high quality product inspection equipment that can allow food manufacturers to maintain the highest standards of food safety. At Mettler-Toledo, we are in constant dialogue with our customers to understand their challenges, and with legislative bodies across the world, to ensure our technology meets food safety needs both now and in the future. That dialogue is a vital part of the research that we do. We are renowned for innovation, and we have R&D teams and facilities across the world, as well as testing facilities that customers and legislators can attend to see our technology in action. During the COVID-19 pandemic, the live video links which allow for remote viewing were even more important as it overcame the difficulties of the travel restrictions.
Food safety is hugely important and is also a fast-evolving area. Our priority is to keep food manufacturers ahead of the game in these matters, with capabilities such as digital Track and Trace becoming ever more paramount.
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)
ANS: Food safety is gaining high importance among food manufacturers. We see newand additional resources being deployed by food processors to comply with local and/or global food safety norms. With the increase in outsourcing, all the e-commerce players are setting up in-house food safety departments for their own labels. In order 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. Food manufacturers are looking for food manufacturing equipment which can provide them with reliability and repeatability, and help them achieve digitalization. As a relatively new technology, x-ray inspection systems are gaining importance for those applications which require contaminant detection of a wide range of contaminants, plus for those needing packaging and product integrity checks to be simultaneously completed.
As space is becoming a premium for food manufacturers, we have launched a new product inspection combination system for harsh washdown environments. CM33 Washdown and CM35 Washdown combination systems 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.
Q: The last year has brought many disruptions among businesses. What is the impact of the Covid-19 pandemic on your business?
ANS: Post-pandemic, we have seen a boost in opportunities linked directly to an increase in consumption. This has also resulted in an improved presence of brands across all 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 bulkand 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 online, high speed, reliable and repeatable inspection equipment.
Q: What is the USP of your machines? What makes you stand out in the competition?
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 that 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 FlashCellTMLoad 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, while other systems in the market only reach around 600/650ppm. 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: Are you happy with the regulation of the government for this industry?
ANS: The Government of India has invested heavily in the 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 the 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 which needs to be taken by the FSSAI together with F&B manufacturers and technology partners like us.
Q: How is the foreign object detection performance of these systems measured?
ANS: 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: Please tell us about your after-sales services.
Mettler-Toledo is a technology partner for most of the food companies globally, 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 in the business of “End of Line Inspection Equipment”, 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 2021 growth?
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 our 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 digitalisation, 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.
