Testimonial Rigoni di Asiago – Italy

Marina Panozzo, Quality – R&D Manager

Can you briefly describe your company and your main area of business?

Rigoni di Asiago's story is a simple one, a story about passion, love for nature and a deep connection with its place of origin. The company has always chosen to work with high-quality organic ingredients to offer products that are good for people and fair for the environment. To its traditional production of honey, in time Rigoni di Asiago has successfully added Fiordifrutta, Dolcedì, Nocciolata and Tantifrutti. High-quality products that have won over millions of families, in Italy and, in the last few years, in the world as well. A success determined by the love for the environment, by a brand that works in nature and with nature. Choosing organic without compromise means believing in a better, sustainable future for today's consumers and for the generations of tomorrow. A constant commitment, a path that Rigoni di Asiago has chosen many years ago.

What made you consider Food Radar Systems, and how did you evaluate the investment?

At Rigoni di Asiago we focus on innovation and continuous improvement. Managing the risk of foreign bodies more effectively is of fundamental importance in terms of food safety. Food Radar Systems offered something new, and we wanted to see and test how real it was. Detection of plastic and other low density foreign materials which are not detected by other systems such as X-ray inspection or metal detector was of great interest to us. So, we went to Sweden to test in their Food Radar pilot system to find out if it was real and applicable to our products. The tests in Sweden were very positive and showed us that the Food Radar system was also suitable for FiordiFrutta, a product with pieces of fruit and we immediately understood the great potential of this technology.

What have been the most notable results or improvements since implementing our system?

Using Food Radar in our process gives us the ability to detect: Foreign bodies of plant origin among these leaves, petioles, pieces of pits, twigs, pieces of wood etc. Low density plastic such as food plastic used for the packaging of raw materialsThe Food Radar system proved to be very effective for the detection of foreign bodies of different origin with all type of fruit and productions. Number of foreign bodies in the product decreased significantly. Currently in our production, Food Radar system associated with X-ray inspection allows us to manage the risk of foreign bodies more effectively.

How was your experience with our service, support, and the integration of the system into your production line?

From the beginning, the Food Radar Systems in Sweden has given us excellent assistance both in presence and remotely. Each issue was handled quickly and effectively.Furthermore, all our implementation requests have always been accepted and analyzed for their feasibility. Very soon we understood the importance of bringing the Food Radar system to the same level of interconnection and exchanges in the production line as we planned for other parts of our systems.Data collection from the process and information exchange between different part of the process, allows us to monitor the production of each type of FiordiFrutta and increase the sensibility of Food Radar detection in a specific manner. For this we asked Food Radar Systems to implement an Industry 4.0 solution also for our Food Radar system. The company accepted the new challenge and now the system works on an Industry 4.0 platform with big success.