Case Study: Safeway Fresh Foods

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Safeway Fresh Foods

As a family-owned processor of healthy ready-to-eat snacks and meals, Safeway Fresh Foods goes to market under their Sunnyside Farms brand and customers’ private labels. Behind their motto, "Your brand integrity is safe with us," is an unwavering commitment to exceptionally high quality product and food safety at every step of their operation.

They rely on equipment from the METTLER TOLEDO Product Inspection Group on all nine of their production lines with eight Safeline metal detectors, a Safeline x-ray inspection system and three Hi-Speed checkweighers.

"During my 40-year career, I’ve had the opportunity to use metal detectors and checkweighers from many different suppliers. When I landed with METTLER TOLEDO, I decided to stay with them," said Sal Tedesco, co-owner of Safeway Fresh Foods. "Their equipment is very dependable and easy to maintain. We’ve had great success with them despite our hostile environment. It’s cold and wet during production; then we subject these machines to a rigorous sanitation routine that includes a caustic hot water washdown. Despite our challenging environment, this inspection equipment is pain-free."

METTLER-TOLEDO Product Inspection Group

Safeway uses Signature Touch metal detectors to find ferrous and non-ferrous tramp metal and the most difficult to detect, non-magnetic stainless steel fragments and non-spherical fine wire contaminants. Featuring high frequency advanced detection coil technology and dynamic filtering techniques, these metal detectors maximize detection sensitivity while inspecting Safeway’s many products that go to convenience stores, supermarkets, club stores, quick serve restaurants and others.

"It’s critical that the metal detectors maintain their high sensitivity despite big changes in the size of the package and the nature of the product. This sensitivity is the difference between finding something and not finding something that could break a tooth or lacerate a mouth," said Tedesco. "Customer safety is our highest priority and the driving force for choosing METTLER TOLEDO’s inspection equipment."

To monitor fill levels, Safeway has Beltweigh checkweighers on three of their production lines where detecting underfills and/or overfills has significant value. On two grab-and-go lines that pack fresh fruits and vegetables into 3 to 14 oz. bags, bowls and trays, the Hi-Speed checkweighers reject under-weight packages from the line and record over-weight packages to give Safeway valuable information they use to adjust the fillers and reduce product give-away. On a line where five people each add one fruit to produce mixed-fruit trays and bowls in 2 lb. trays or 3lb. bowls, the checkweigher is programmed to detect only underweight packages so fruit can be added, if needed, before the package is sealed.