Dipix plans to boost European inspection system sales

APRIL 27--Dipix Europe (Brentford, UK; www.dipix.com) has been set up in London to market and service Dipix systems in Europe, Scandinavia, the Middle East, and Africa. Dipix Technologies, headquartered in Ottawa, ON, Canada, is a designer and manufacturer of automated inspection systems for the processed food industry.

Dipix's innovative machine vision systems monitor the high speed manufacture of food products such as biscuits, buns, tortillas, pizzas, bread, and confectionery. The systems use 2-D/3-D imaging to provide accurate size, shape, and color information for randomly oriented, fast moving products.

"Labor rates are high in many European countries," said Dipix Europe managing director Robin Cairns, "so we expect our systems to pay for themselves in only one to two years."

Dipix has developed a wide range of innovations such as bottom color scanning, individual piece rejection, and automatic lane balancing for random objects. These innovations are developed in conjunction with customers to ensure that each installation meets all the customer's project requirements.

The company currently has over 150 systems installed worldwide, including North America, Asia, Europe, and Australia. It has supplied systems across Europe for inspecting all the major physical parameters of bakery products supplied to McDonald's. Other applications include the inspection of frozen pizza bases at major pizza manufacturers throughout Europe.