Project description
Food analyser for safe food processing
Food safety as well as the impact of food processing on the environment are major concerns. The food industry aims to increase quality and reduce costs but lab analysis results are often too late to prevent losses or damage. Reliable analysis in real-time to ensure food safety and quality is urgently needed. The Sherlock FoodMonitor is a food analyser that observes food processing in real-time. During processing, it can detect hazardous materials like contaminants or foreign substances and also provide information about food composition such as fat content or sugar. The EU funded Food Monitor project aims to develop the scanning abilities of this device and pave the way for its commercialisation.
Objective
Nearly 67% of the food we eat is processed. With increased concern for food security, safety, traceability and the environmental impact of the food production, the industry needs to assure the quality of their products while reducing their costs. This is done mainly through lab analysis. However, despite the detail and accuracy, the results are often too late to have a real impact in the processing chain. There is no efficient means of accurately analyzing products in-line and in real-time to assure product safety, quality, increased sustainability and greater factory efficiency. Thus, there is a market opportunity for quick, precise and flexible food analysis systems.
Insort GmbH is a highly specialized company for optical sorting of food products. We have been developing innovative technologies for the classification and sorting of products for the food industry since 2011. We were founded in Austria by Mr. Matthias Jeindl in cooperation with Infruits AG and EVK DI Kerschhaggl GmbH, and recently expanded our activity to several countries in Europe, the USA and Canada.
Our latest innovation, the Sherlock FoodMonitor, is a food analyzer that provides the chemical composition of products in real time and at any given point of the processing chain. It allows to identify potentially dangerous substances, foreign materials, fraudulent meat, as well as variations in the inner characteristics (e.g. size, shape, dry matter, sugar, fat content). The acquired data can be used to modify parameters during processing to reduce the creation of undesired compounds and for quality assurance at any point of the line, contributing the industry 4.0 of the future.
In this phase 2 project, we will improve the scanning capabilities of the Sherlock FoodMonitor to bring it to TRL9 and prepare its market launch for 2021. Our solution will enable food companies to produce safer and higher quality products, while reducing food waste and improving factory sustainability and profitability
Fields of science
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Programme(s)
Funding Scheme
SME-2 - SME instrument phase 2Coordinator
8324 Kirchberg A.D. Raab
Austria
The organization defined itself as SME (small and medium-sized enterprise) at the time the Grant Agreement was signed.