Brand Image in Food Industry means everything

The perception of a company producing food is closely entailed with sales. From time to time, we see a note at our local superstore that a certain product batch is being recalled from the market, and that we should check if our purchases do not contain pieces of nutshells for example. The consequences are severe, the customer will surely not buy its favourite chocolate bar for a few months now to avoid the peril, even though there are many different batches available at different stores. The damage is done, the company’s image has been harmed.

What can go wrong?

     Just this year, one of the world's biggest food companies had found glass pieces in one of their products in South Africa, so they had to call for the return of the entire country’s supply of specific candies. The giant called the withdrawal “a voluntary and precautionary step” but both the brand image and therefore sales experienced a backlash. Moreover, if the contamination injured a customer, the company would have had a lawsuit coming their way.

     Not only tangible particles can contaminate food products. From time to time, it can be heard that some meats contained E. Coli or Salmonella. Such cases are the most dangerous ones, and sometimes even end with customers’ deaths. The aftermath is always terrible, thousands of people getting sick requiring medical attention, all of them filing lawsuits, and then years of court battles begin. Even the biggest multinationals can go bankrupt after such a disaster.

What to do?

 So how to maintain a clean slate these days? Well, it’s not that simple. When it comes to diseases and bacteria in food, the best way is just to be sure of the supplier. Many of successful companies introduced extra tests being done to employees monthly, making sure that no worker poses a contamination threat. It must be mentioned that proper pest control measures must be a routine, as well as thorough disinfection and cleaning of the operational equipment.

     On the other hand, the entire production lines in food industry include potential particle contamination risks. Avoiding those risks means conveying food pieces with high quality homogenous belts (eg. Soliflex) to leave no possibility of belt fragments becoming foreign bodies in the food. Soliflex belts from Ammeraal Beltech are made from a single piece of homogeneous plastic, thus it does not fray nor contaminate the food.

     Cleaning and sanitizing the Soliflex belts range reveals its additional safety benefits. Despite of requiring less water and time while cleaning, the Soliflex range can be installed on existing conveyors making it possible to be washed and deterged on the spot.

All in all, there are a few measures which companies must take to assure purity of the food products, it is required both by the brand image and ethics. Thankfully, all of which can be accessed through Ammeraal Beltech solutions.