Longhini Preserves Sausage Quality with State-of-the-Art Metal Detectors from Mettler-Toledo Safeline
July 22, 2020 – Longhini Sausage Company, a maker of Italian sausages and other specialty meat products, takes pride in maintaining the high standards set forth by their founder almost 70 years ago. That dedication to excellence is paying off – they’ve grown 80 percent this year. To help ensure their product quality and support their growing customer base, Longhini installed two new Profile Advantage metal detectors from Mettler-Toledo Safeline.
“We decided to automate inspection back in 2015 after seeing other companies experience metal contamination issues that were completely preventable,” said David Kemp, CEO of Longhini. “While we’ve never had problems with metal, we aren’t willing to take any chances when it comes to protecting consumers, customers and our brand.”
“Our application is difficult for most metal detectors. Meat products have natural variations in temperature and moisture, plus our wide range of case sizes presents a variation in product density. Products with variable characteristics are hard to accurately inspect,” said Rich Longhini, President of Longhini. “To overcome these challenges, we had to find an unusually advanced metal detector.”
“After considering multiple suppliers and speaking with our sales rep, Mark Stewart of Flo-Dynamics, we decided to go with Mettler-Toledo because they have great equipment as well as fantastic service and support,” said Longhini. “We wanted to go beyond standard baseline inspection and find metal fragments far smaller than the industry requirement. The sensitivity and reliability of our Profile Advantage systems are amazing. If you’re going to get a metal detector, it makes sense to get the best.”
Longhini purchased their first Profile Advantage in 2015. To maximize versatility, they selected a semi-automated, stand-alone system on wheels that can be moved around their facility to inspect their products in cases off-line. Then, to increase throughput, they purchased a second Profile Advantage on wheels in 2019, but this one is rolled around and integrated with various lines throughout the facility to fully-automate inspection. This new inline metal detector inspects thermoformed packages that range in size from 6 oz to 1 lb and tray packs that range in size from 5 to 10 lb. The first, off-line system now exclusively inspects cases, between 5 and 40 lb in size, filled with either bulk sausages or tray packs not already inspected by the inline system.
As Mettler-Toledo’s top-of-the-line metal detector, the Profile Advantage is unmatched in identifying and rejecting every type of metal in even the most difficult applications. Compared to traditional single-frequency systems, Profile Advantage is better able to discern changes due to the presence of metal versus natural variations within the product by using multi-simultaneous frequencies to create a reference point. This advanced operation maximizes sensitivity while virtually eliminating false rejects when inspecting all kinds of products.
“One of our favorite Profile Advantage features is the ‘product clustering’ capability, which allows us to run many similar products under the exact same setting. We can almost always lump new products together under existing product settings,” added Longhini. “We also like the auto-setup routine. With it, our operators can easily add totally new products or recalibrate in less than five minutes.”
“Overall, the dependability of our Profile Advantage systems is awesome. They haven’t had any unplanned downtime at all and have been entirely maintenance free. We test them a few times a day, which is why we know they’re consistently sensitive across our different products and packages,” said Longhini. “Mettler-Toledo’s customer service is always there for us if we have a question about our metal detectors. To be frank, if a supplier doesn’t have great service, it doesn’t matter if they have the best equipment in the world – Mettler-Toledo has both.”
“These metal detectors give us hard evidence that no metal is in our products,” concluded Kemp. “Longhini is known for producing the highest quality meat products on the market. Our Mettler-Toledo metal detectors are essential for protecting our reputation.”
About METTLER TOLEDO Product Inspection Group
The METTLER TOLEDO Product Inspection Group – Safeline, Hi-Speed, CI-Vision, and PCE – is the world’s leading supplier of metal detectors, x-ray inspection systems, in-line checkweighers, machine vision systems, and serialization/track and trace solutions. The Group is a division of Mettler-Toledo Inc., a global supplier of precision instruments with sales and service locations in over 39 countries. METTLER TOLEDO product inspection systems are used by manufacturers in many industries, including food, beverage, pharmaceutical, nutraceutical, personal care, plastics and chemicals, to ensure the total quality of their products and improve the efficiency of their manufacturing and packaging processes.
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