Raytec Vision is a leading expert in optical sorting technology for food as well as X-Ray inspection for packaged products, providing a wide range of machines for safety and quality control. Raytec Vision was founded in 2001 by the idea of Raffaele Pezzoli and Claudio Quarantelli.
They had the intuition of merging three industrial sectors in a single passion: quality control in the food sector.
From the establishment of the company, Raytec marketed a vast range of innovative machines, such as optical sorters for raw materials (e.g., tomatoes, potatoes, and peppers) and for processed products (such as lettuce, diced fruit, or jam), as well as x-ray inspection machines for packaged and unpackaged products.
The main headquarters is based in Parma, and it is a highly technological facility equipped with three test rooms to allow customers to directly test the optical sorters on their product, recreating the exact conditions of factories in terms of temperature, humidity and expected results.
Raytec manufactures different machine models, each with specific characteristics able to adapt to different products in their different processing phase.
The last machine launched on the market by Raytec Vision is Curiosity, an optical sorter which combines efficiency to the fully hygienic design, which makes it fully compliant with the EHEDG guidelines.
Officially launched at the 2019 edition of Cibus Tec Curiosity is drastically rewriting the rules of sorting automation. Thanks to its design and cutting-edge conception, Curiosity can be easily cleaned and can guarantee high efficiency with its highest resolution cameras.
Another technological news, released in 2021 but already gaining ground in the fresh-cut and green vegetable sectors, is the DOPPIA CLOROFILLA vision technology, which improves the sorting analysis reaching an efficiency of 95% even when the contaminants are the same color as the good product. A reference application is green beans. In the case of contamination by datura, a weed particularly widespread in organic crops, DOPPIA CLOROFILLA has shown excellent results. The sorting machines equipped with this technology can easily discriminate between good products and contaminants, protecting the health of the final consumer and avoiding the risk of complaints.
For what concerns the sorting of frozen and dry food, Raytec has developed a specific technology for its sorter Dryce. The DNA Trace technology has in fact obtained excellent results with frozen mushrooms in the identification of foreign bodies such as pieces of wood and cigarette butts, which are practically indistinguishable from the good mushroom. A result never obtained before and that will mark the future in the field of food quality.
Finally, the era of automated sorting opens up even for freshly harvested potatoes. Thanks to the Raynbow optical sorter, excellent results can finally be obtained even for unwashed potatoes. This machine is in fact able to distinguish between potatoes covered with soil, clods, stones, and green potatoes.
Moreover, the 3Way configuration allows dividing between waste and second choice, contributing to a saving of raw materials and increasing the sustainability of potato sorting. Hans Felbermaier, managing director of a family-own company, confirms in full these new features. “The introduction of Raynbow into the production process has brought countless benefits. First and foremost, sorting reliability, but also a considerable saving in production costs. Raynbow is a ductile machine that perfectly fits the producers’ needs.”
From 2021, the new Raynbow 70 inches-wide version is available to manage higher production (up to 55 t/h). In 2022, Raytec will also release the newest 2.4-meter-wide version to serve customers who need higher hourly production. All these important news in food sorting demonstrate that Raytec is investing more and more in research and development to adapt to the new market’s trends and to different applications that are marking the final consumer’s life. Just to make a practical example, with the advent of COVID, the most important food processors and manufactures are asking technologies to guarantee food safety. This shows the soaring sales growth of Curiosity, thanks to its fully hygienic design, and the excellent sales trend of Raybox, the x-ray inspector that can identify even very small, low-density foreign bodies in pre-packaged products.
Another important aspect is the ability of Raytec’s machines to share real-time data and performance statistics, which allows the operator to continuously improve sorting and consequently check productivity in any time.
All this leads the company to an optimistic view of the coming years and a continuous search for technological innovation.