Becoming Intralox FoodSafe

We all understand the importance of wearing our seatbelts while driving. It’s something we’re taught from a young age: seatbelts save lives.

But they don’t do it alone.

There’s your airbag system, which works with your seatbelt to brace you against sudden impact. Your shatter-resistant windshield prevents additional injury when the worst happens. Your anti-lock brakes are designed to prevent accidents in the first place. Even your car’s body is engineered to absorb deadly force.

Seatbelts protect us, but the vehicle’s combined system of safety features prevents catastrophe.

In the same way, your facility’s food safety depends on more than just conveyor belting or sprockets. It depends on more than any one component or person in your complex operation. For your facility to become truly food safe, you must consider the interaction between all elements.

That’s why we created The Intralox® FoodSafe™ System: a suite of products, services, and training designed to work together and protect your customers, your brand, and your bottom line.

Let us introduce you to the Intralox FoodSafe System.

Innovating Together

Our original food safety product suite was called the Intralox Hygienic System, and that’s what it addressed: hygiene in food production.

We worked within that framework for years, continuously improving our products to simplify sanitation procedures and boost hygienic performance.

As you know firsthand, food processing also evolved rapidly in those years. It presents more threats than just poor hygiene.

“We’d been so focused on hygiene,” says Kevin Guernsey, Engineering Supervisor at Intralox. “We realized we needed to address a second and just as important aspect of food safety, which is preventing foreign material contamination.”

We knew we had to take a more comprehensive approach for our partners. They needed more than easy cleaning. They—and the consumers they serve—needed holistic protection.

“That’s exactly what we’ve done by reinventing our entire food product line,” Guernsey says. “We now not only have the most hygienic offerings in the industry, but also the most intuitive and fault tolerant.”

To accomplish this, we worked directly with our customers. Our experts assessed more than 1,000 of their conveyor systems to understand exactly what risks and challenges they face daily.

“We gained a thorough, direct understanding of the risks to their products as well as our own,” shares Guernsey. “It helped us mitigate the risk of our components becoming potential contaminants.”

This underscores the importance of your system’s elements working in harmony. A safer belt can improve product release and yield, but what if your sprockets drift during cleaning and leave your belt’s tracking misaligned? Then there’s greater risk of foreign material contamination (FMC).

“We were able to ‘bucket’ the challenges we observed into five categories,” Guernsey explains. “It allowed us to focus our innovation strategy and realize a more robust system to prevent failures, to maximize your plant’s uptime and throughput, and—of course—to produce food safely.”

A Material Difference

“It started foundationally with materials,” Guernsey says.

As we approached this complete reinvention, we focused first on introducing new belt materials that could excel in your most difficult applications.

“We’ve introduced tougher materials,” Guernsey shares. “They’re more durable and chemical-resistant for food processing.”

For instance, our modular plastic belting in PK (Polyketone) provides better impact, chemical, and abrasion resistance than acetal. This means it reduces nonmechanical belt-related FMC, more easily withstanding cleaning chemicals and belt removal and reinstallation.

ThermoDrive belting is now offered in A23, which significantly extends belt life in incline-to-packaging conveyors—especially useful for highly seasoned products. Dura, another ThermoDrive material, performs in high-temperature and heavy-load conditions.

“Simply put,” says Guernsey, “these materials provide superior durability and performance.”

No Breaks

“Our second area of focus was the product design itself,” Guernsey says.

As our engineers revamped the product line, they focused on creating more robust, fault-tolerant products while also simplifying their use.

For instance, as we assessed our customers’ conveyance systems, we noticed damage occurring at belt edges. To combat this, we first added Heavy-Duty Edge technology to our modular belting in Series 800 and 2400. Then we added it to ThermoLace, our patented joining method for ThermoDrive belting.

We also introduced ZeroSplice technology—which removes the need for field splicing—to simplify the way our partners connect belt modules in the field. Plus, it utilizes the aforementioned fully enclosed ThermoLace™ Heavy-Duty Edge, which reduced FMC risk compared to our previous edge that used metal lacing and staples.

Other new product features have simplified our technology’s setup and use.

“We noticed partners incorrectly assembling older styles of our Series 800 belting, which was causing failures,” Guernsey says. “With HDE included, S800 becomes impossible to assemble incorrectly.”

Additionally, our S2400 Radius belting with HDE has arrows to indicate travel direction. And—to further foolproof belt use—our S560 Tight Transfer belts offer superior sprocket engagement, and S8140 belting includes a center lug drive system that integrates belt tracking into the drive.

Beyond the Belt

We then turned our attention beyond the belt to develop tools and belt path components that simplify your processes and enhance your productivity.

“The new FoodSafe belt tools facilitate installation, removal, and maintenance,” Guernsey says. “This makes each task safer, more efficient, and less likely to cause damage.”

Intralox FoodSafe tools include belt pullers and an industry-first rod remover tool, each of which prevent belt damage and make your maintenance more efficient. We also offer a Clean Release module for S800 belting, which eliminates the need for tools to open or close the belt.

Perhaps more critical are our new Intralox FoodSafe belt path components. CleanLock sprockets, for example, maintain their alignment without the use of hardware like retainer rings.

“These parts of your system interact with our belts directly,” explains Guernsey. “They have a critical impact on operation.”

A Culture of Food Safety

Finally, to support this new system, Intralox food safety and application experts developed a variety of services, as well as hands-on and digital training.

These resources include our ongoing series of Performance Support Videos, startup support, maintenance training, and field splicing assistance.

Plus, the Intralox FoodSafe Conveyor Program offers assessments and workshops that can keep your line’s health and performance optimized.

Commercial Food Sanitation, an Intralox company, offers their own series of professional workshops, training sessions, and certification pathways that sharpen your team’s skills.

“A plant’s food safety is only as good as its culture,” says Nicole Cammarata, Global Training Manager at Commercial Food Sanitation (CFS). “Hygienically designed systems need hygienically minded operators. They need proper procedures.”

Intralox and CFS offer these trainings to ensure that your food safety improves holistically. If your team’s skills don’t grow alongside your line, suboptimal protocols can tank your productivity.

Conversely, when you consider your operators as part of your system and invest in their growth, they’re able to anticipate your market’s evolving standards and keep you ahead.

Becoming Intralox FoodSafe

Food manufacturers no longer have to choose between food safety and operational efficiency.

All Intralox FoodSafe products provide their own benefits. But when they’re used together, the improvements become exponentially greater.

“We believe these new Intralox FoodSafe solutions—when implemented together—will provide the most hygienic, fault-tolerant, and productive food conveyance system in the industry,” Guernsey says.

Advancing your food safety while maximizing your production is possible, and partners all over the world are using our system to do just that.

It's your turn to become Intralox FoodSafe.