Antares Vision S.r.l.
When continuous inspection is required
The Italian company Antares Vision provides inspection and track & trace solutions for the complete production process, for example, in confectionery and pastry products.
By Dr Bernhard Reichenbach
Protecting consumers from damaging or dangerous products, avoiding or limiting recall actions, protection against counterfeits, as well as hindering waste and increasing output: all of these are factors contributing to companies’ growing desire for comprehensive inspection of the production and logistics chain. This promotes the trend towards effective solutions for inspection and track & trace.
The Antares Vision company, based in the Northern Italian city of Travagliato near Brescia, offers such solutions. The globally-active, 400-employee company with a strong presence in Germany (subsidiary located in Bensheim) generated sales of € 58.5 m in 2016. In 2017, management expect an increase to € 85 m, and to break through the € 100 m ceiling in 2018.
Detect confectionery defects with certainty
The product palette at Antares Vision includes vision control systems as well as track & trace solutions for industries like pharmaceuticals and medical technology as well as the food industry. “We supply the most comprehensive and scalable solutions packages for inspection- and track & trace systems as well as smart data management,” said CEO Emidio Zorzella recently at a press conference.
The company, which was founded ten years ago, is today the largest manufacturer of these solutions for the safety of pharmaceutical packaging. “The pharmaceutical industry is years ahead of most other branches with regard to legal regulations and 100 % in-line inspections,” explained Emidio Zorzella. “We take the experience, references and technologies developed from this sector and transfer them to other areas, such as food, as well as packaging engineering in general.”
System solutions for optical quality control using image processing include the standard inspection systems PIC and AFC. PIC (Packaging Integrity Control) inspects products like confectionery and baked goods in trays with regard to shape, colour, and/or completeness and can be integrated easily into the packaging machines. AFC (Antares Foreign Check) works with two high-resolution colour cameras and detects defects during the filling process into cans. Non-conforming products can be culled, or the system can be stopped, depending on customer wishes.
Amongst the new products from Antares Vision is the compact version of the system Print & Check All In One. With this system, the company introduces a new generation of its premium serialisation machines on the market. It combines package printing and verification functions on up to three sides along with a weight control and labelling function, plus an originality sealing module to protect against counterfeits. Further, a double ejection system allows for ejection differentiation based on weight or printing/labelling. At only 1,865 mm long, the very space-saving system equipped with one ejection system offers space savings of 20 % compared with the 2,400 mm long standard version, and it is easily accessible.
The company plans to introduce another product highlight – and a real novelty on the world stage – this coming October: a complete software solution for inter-system data exchange on all four levels in accordance with the ISA-95 standard. •
