Kanan Smart Solutions

Contaminated food affects one in 10 people, leading to over 420,000 deaths every year. –World Health Organization (WHO)

An recently as Feb 2021, five food processing organizations faced class-action lawsuits for crossing the heavy metal limits in their products. The investigation revealed unwarranted levels of arsenic, cadmium, and lead in the food.

This is but one of the instances that go on to paint a painstaking picture of the food and beverages industry. Today, metallic and non-metallic impurities and contamination are becoming a key concern for this industry. And it is primarily due to scarcity of relevant technology or unintentional oversight.

Enter Kanan Smart Solutions.

The company is enabling baking and other food processing companies to reinvent their food safety standards with the help of machine-vision technology. The company’s X-ray-based machine vision systems are paving the way for seamless and timely detection of contaminants, including ceramic, high-density glass, stainless steel, stone, lame and much more.

The X-ray generators and cameras built into Kanan’s machine vision systems can detect contaminants without affecting their condition, taste, nutritional value, or any other aspect of the food. These inspection systems are also built with worker safety in mind and hence, pose no risk to the workers on the factory floor.

Keeping Up with the Food Safety Revolution for Baking Companies

Sanchez notes that today the baking industry, like the rest of the food industries, is rife with a plethora of challenges. Firstly, the companies are in dire need of flexible inspection processes, which can focus on their particular production conditions and deliver world-class outcomes. Companies are placing greater emphasis on solutions that inspect quality issues, such as product count, lack of filling or shortage of product. Kanan products meet these demands. In addition, they are also being obligated to employ greater traceability into their inspection process to win end-customer’s trust. Kanan’s systems can keep a record of X-Ray pictures to address that need.

Kanan is going above and beyond with its solution offerings. The company is partnering with Mekitec— another specialist in X-ray systems based in Finland— to develop some of the best food inspection solutions for the baking industry. “The X-ray-based solutions guarantee optimum precision and accuracy for food quality inspections,” says Andres Sanchez, commercial manager at Kanan Smart Solutions.

Kanan’s entire food inspection system comes in a compact size; so, it doesn’t require large floor areas to set up. This makes it suitable for space-constrained settings, which is a frequent case for bakery companies. Presently, the company offers three different inspection system variants to let clients choose the perfect solution as per their requirements. While the KSS 250 variant is designed for smaller and simpler food products, the KSS 400 model is ideal for moderate-sized products. “The third one, KSS 730, while specifically designed for large-scale food processing, is extraordinarily small, since it uses two small emitters instead of a large one, which helps clients to save a lot of space in their plants,” mentions Sanchez. On the other hand, the broad inspection space offered in the KSS 730 ensures that heavier trays of food products can pass through its conveyors without hindrance.

Guiding Clients to Greater Efficiency and Higher Productivity

When it comes to implementing its solutions, Kanan employs a consultative approach. The company kicks off the onboarding after an initial counseling process, which includes a detailed analysis to identify the opportunity areas where the clients can most benefit from the inspection solutions. Kanan’s engineers then engage with the clients through every step of the implementation process while also helping them generate a precise game plan to maintain or enhance the overall productivity of the processing plants. To facilitate a seamless transition to Kanan’s solutions, the company conducts comprehensive training programs and ensures that all the operators are well-versed in the functioning of the inspection equipment.

Further illustrating the value Kanan brings to its clients, Sanchez cites an instance when they served a multinational company. Although the client had inspection systems installed in the facility, they were unable to deliver accurate inspections for products sealed in multi-partitioned packets. After searching for a robust solution, the company finally found its saving grace in Kanan, which was able to outfit their factory floor with state-of-the-art inspection systems as per their exact requirements. Kanan’s inspection systems delivered outstanding results from the get-go, which even impressed the client and prompted them to expand the company’s solutions to other plants. An important learning for Kanan was that a good execution of the solution is as important, if not more, than the system design and engineering.

Propelled by such success stories today Kanan is witnessing exponential growth prospects. With a firm footprint in North and Central America, the company’s next step is establishing its presence in South America and Asia.

Currently, Kanan is upgrading the remote monitoring capabilities of their systems. This will enable clients to track the health of their systems as well as to conduct preventative maintenance whenever needed. Furthermore, in collaboration with its current partner Mekitec, Kanan aims to continue developing ultimate inspection solutions for the baking industry. “Apart from fostering uninterrupted growth, we’re investing in R&D. With Artificial Intelligence, our systems will be able to detect previously undetectable contaminants and quality issues such as faulty product decoration. This will help us to deliver industry-leading capabilities to our clients” concludes Sanchez.