Banbury firm Fortress Technology wins national food safety ‘Oscars’ accolade

Published by

Peter Davison

Fortress Technology, a Banbury-based manufacturer of food safety inspection equipment employing nearly 70 food inspection engineering and service specialists, has won the top prize in the national PPMA Group Industry Awards 2022.

Known in food manufacturing circles as the Oscars equivalent of the processing, packing, manufacturing and robotics industry, Fortress brought home the trophy for Innovative Processing System for its time, cost and labour-saving digital testing solution.

Fortress, which builds x-ray, metal detectors and checkweighers used within a number of the largest bakery, snack, dairy, meat, confectionery and ingredient factories that supply supermarkets and retailers throughout Europe and beyond, were commended by the expert judging panel for “solving a problem applicable to all food manufacturers doing metal detection testing, making it simpler for staff with no production disruption.”

Celebrating the best in British manufacturing, earning such high acclaim in the Most Innovative Processing System category was a proud win for the Banbury firm, which earlier this year moved into their new HQ in Thorpe Way.

Proving that the appetite for digital tools among industry leaders to improve efficiency and increase audit transparency across the food supply chain is strong, Halo Digital Testing is a unique solution created by the food safety firm. Designed to reduce food waste and make it easier for food factories to document the testing of machinery to ensure contaminated food is being rejected, Fortress fought off strong competition from automation counterparts to win the Innovative Processing System trophy.

Commercial manager Jodie Curry said: “Automated technology features that deliver standardisation, less complexity and ease of access, all help food processors to be more efficient and productive. Halo Digital Testing is a brilliant example of how our company goes about creating technology tools that give corporations better control over compliance data and food safety audit reporting,” adds Jodie.

Unique to Fortress and developed in-house in collaboration with the largest snack factory in the United States, Halo Digital Testing was originally engineered to overcome the major limitations of performing manual checks on snack inspection lines. “No other technology in the food inspection market can test all sizes and metal types so reliably, precisely and at such a fast speed,” comments one snack manufacturer.

Praising the efforts of the entire Banbury-based workforce and the breadth of EMEA customers that the company now supports – from blue chip food manufacturers to SME factories – Managing Director Phil Brown adds: “This is an exciting time for digital technologies. Especially in the food production market. It’s a petri dish of innovation and time saving opportunities.”

Peter Davison

Peter Davison is deputy editor of The Business Magazine. He has spent his life in journalism – doing work experience in newsrooms in and around Bristol while still at school, and landing his first job on a local newspaper aged 19. By 28 he was the youngest newspaper editor in the country. An early advocate of online news, he spent the first years of the 2000s telling his bosses that the internet posed both the biggest opportunity and greatest threat to the newspaper industry and the art of journalism. He was right on both counts. Since 2006 he has enjoyed a career as a freelance journalist. He lives in rural Wiltshire with one wife, two children, and three cats.