New anti-permeation and leak detection testing for food packaging
US-based international manufacturing giant Mocon has partnered with Australian company Inspection Systems to establish a certified lab for permeation, seal strength and leak detection testing for food and pharmaceutical packaging products.
Inspection Systems, a supplier of inspection and testing instruments and services, with locations in Australia and New Zealand, has created a separate entity, IS Laboratories, to support the partnership. It aims to provide food and pharmaceutical companies with fast and affordable testing services using Mocon’s gold-standard instrumentation.
IS Laboratories, which will be based in Melbourne, will be the first Mocon-certified test facility in Australia, and the eighth Mocon-certified lab in the world.
“Up until now, companies in this part of the world who did not have access to Mocon instrumentation in their own facilities would either have to send their products to other countries for testing or attempt to find a small laboratory, which typically has limited capability,” said Brad Grubb, Director of Inspection Systems.
IS Laboratories testing capabilities include oxygen, water vapor and carbon dioxide permeation testing, burst and pressure strength testing, as well as testing for pressure decay.
Over the past several years, Mocon said it has been actively pursuing strategic laboratory partnerships in key manufacturing regions around the world. The Company said its objective is to offer affordable permeation testing globally at laboratories that have been certified by the Mocon.
Mocon said its Mocon-certified laboratory network targets a broad range of companies, ranging from multinational corporations, which would benefit from a local facility capable of duplicating gold-standard testing protocols, to smaller firms that may only have need for a few validations tests per year.
Mocon-certification means that ‘state-of-the-art’ instrumentation has been installed, inspected and is maintained by a Mocon-factory authorised service technician, and that the laboratory staff have been trained on Mocon corporate test lab methods and protocols and record keeping to ensure quality and equivalency.
“Mocon certification assures that companies using any one of these facilities will get the same level of services and quality they would find at any other Mocon-certified location anywhere in the world,” said Alan Shema, Product Manager for Consulting and Testing Services at Mocon. “This is ideal for multinational companies, which can now be assured that their materials or packages are testing using identical standards and protocols on four different continents,” he said.
Additionally, Mocon said that the new IS Laboratories facilities will allow Australian and New Zealand companies interested in purchasing Mocon instrumentation for their own facility to get a demonstration of the instrumentation in a more convenient location before committing to a purchase.
Mocon-certified laboratories are now located in Australia, the US, Germany, China, India, Canada, the UK and Switzerland.
