FDBusiness.com

Health and safety is a vital part of any business, but when it comes to food manufacture and processing, one of the most frustrating problems is foreign body contamination, especially when it is so preventable. GlassGuard®’s Sales Director Chris Payne explains how using the right fluorescent lamps helps Arla Foods manage risk effectively.

Glass is one of the most dangerous potential contaminants, but with fluorescent lamps all across factories, packaging plants, public buildings and even as component parts in machinery, shattered glass can be common. Diffusers are used in most situations to prevent contamination from lamps shattering unexpectedly, but simple lamp maintenance times are the most dangerous for glass contamination. As soon as the diffuser is removed to change a lamp, the glass is exposed and at risk – and if it breaks over a production line it can be hugely costly to clean up.

Case Study

Having recently switched to GlassGuard® fragment retention lamps, Engineering Manager Dale Blunt at the Arla Foods milk processing facility in Ashby de la Zouch, explains how the change has impacted on the plant.

“We had issues in the past inside one of the filler cabinets where a light fitting exploded and we weren’t at the time using the GlassGuard® shatterproof tubes. We had to have the filler down for 12 hours to do a really thorough clean, just to make sure that there was no possibility of contamination. Just off that single filler, the down time period was about a £12,000 – £14,000 loss in production. By using the GlassGuard® tubes now, that risk is taken away completely.

The GlassGuard® shatterproof coated tubes, even in accidents, contain the glass within an outer coating, so from a product contamination point of view, for us, it’s essential that we use them. Even though we’ve got the diffusers fitted, during periods when we’re doing a lamp change the exposure and risk is significantly higher to the product, so by using the coated tubes the risk is reduced to the point where it is controlled.

We are audited on a regular basis, externally by the customers, who recognise the BlackBand® on the GlassGuard® tubes as the industry standard and for us to use that we are exceeding the standard required in the milk industry at present.”

Glassguard BlackBand® coated lamps are important for a variety of businesses. Any type of production or packaging facility can not afford machinery down time to clean up broken glass, public areas such as schools and sport centres can not risk injury to members of the public due to broken glass and in today’s tough economic climate everyone wants value for money. By complying to the latest Fragment Retention Lamp Standard (IEC61549), GlassGuard® coated lamps offer better, longer performance. Offering 20,000 hours of service life, these lamps require less maintenance and provide far less risk for businesses and are easily recognised for health and safety auditing thanks to the BlackBand® marker.

For more information visit www.glassguard.co.uk or call 01842 763752.