FlexXray Blog

When you’re dealing with a foreign material contamination issue at the plant level, determining a plan to address your product on hold is half the battle. But, by stopping there—paying no mind to the source of contamination—plant managers do their operation a great disservice.

• internal rework
• disposal
• repurpose 

If you limit yourself to the above list, you’re leaving an option on the table that could save you money and increase your ROI. FlexXray has the best equipment, best people and best processes for finding and retrieving foreign material contaminants. Our industry-leading services give us an advantage over competitors that instantly transfers to you upon partnering with FlexXray.

As a professional in the food industry, you’ve probably heard a lot of food safety myths — but you may not have realized that they didn’t tell the whole story. Until you can separate fact from fiction, you can't make the absolute best choices for your company. Let's look at some of the common food safety myths… debunked.

Contamination of food by foreign materials continues to be a problem for food manufacturers. While the first half of 2019 saw a dramatic increase in recalls, a deeper dive into those recalls gives a closer look at the most contaminated foods as well as provides insight into the most common vehicles for contamination in the food industry.

Keeping your food safe is a top priority, and that means safeguarding it against everything from food-borne illness to physical contaminants. X-ray inspection can help with the latter and ensure that your product is free from foreign materials.

When sending it out for inspection doesn’t make sense, X-ray rentals provide another option. But when do portable X-ray machine rentals make the most sense?

As food becomes more processed, the risk of foreign contaminants finding their way into edible products increases. Each step in the production line presents one more opportunity for contamination, either through human or mechanical error. Metal detection services can help prevent metal fragments hidden in food from reaching consumers and provides a way to find slivers of different metals that would be missed throughout the production process.

At a time when methods for detecting foreign materials in food is more sophisticated and accurate than ever before, it would seem that the incidents of contamination by physical hazards would be declining.

But greater capabilities to detect particles in food could actually be triggering more recalls, says Chris Keith, VP of Sales, Marketing and Customer Service for FlexXray.

According to information released by the U.S. Department of Agriculture, foreign materials were the leading cause of food contamination during the first half of 2019.

There’s no question that innovations in plastic are changing the food industry. Plastic is paving the way for new, lightweight forms of packaging to be created, as well as providing more flexible choices in equipment. Plastic products make processing and packaging foods easier and more cost-effective .

However, plastic contamination is also creating growing challenges for food manufacturers. How can companies detect and manage the growing challenge of plastic in food?

(Arlington, Texas, May 13, 2019) – FlexXray, the nation’s leading X-ray inspection and recovery service for food companies, announced today that it has acquired Illinois-based Accu-ray, a leading provider of inspection solutions for food, pharmaceutical and automotive manufacturers throughout the U.S. and Canada. The combined company will operate as FlexXray® effective immediately.

FlexXray helps manufacturing facilities quickly and cost-effectively detect and recover foreign material contamination that can occur during production or packaging. The company works with more than 900 production plants in the U.S., including 90 percent of the top 25 protein and processed-food producers in the country.

No food manufacturer wants to deal with contaminated product, but when foreign material contamination happens, they need to have a process in place. Foreign material in food is something that occurs in many different ways and at every stage of the production process.

Contaminants can make their way into food in the field, during transportation to the production facility or at numerous points in the manufacturing process; they can be caused by anything from human error to mechanical failure.

Regardless of how the foreign material gets into the food, the big concern for plant management is the same: What should the next steps be?