• Image: Getty Images
    Image: Getty Images
Close×

A new food safety app is digitising a range of food safety protocols, from fridge and room temperature monitoring, to activity tracking for kitchens to staff, and changing the way food outlets are managed.

FoodSafe has been endorsed by Food Auditors as an effective program to ensure accurate records are maintained and is based on the Hazard Analysis Critical Control Point (HACCP) guidelines for food safety and hygiene practices.

It was created by Australian tech company Virtual Manager.  

FoodSafe incorporates a range of food safety technology including real-time food, fridge and room temperature monitoring, activity tracking for both kitchens and staff members, and live updates and notifications in the case of any non-conformance issues.

The app compatible with Bluetooth temperature probe and temperature discs, which provide detailed reporting and analytics showing what happens at every stage of the food preparation process, with automated timestamps showing the time each task was completed.

It is currently used by Village Roadshow and Emirates. The University of Queensland Union (UQU) recently started using it. It is the largest food and beverage provider at the University of Queensland campus, servicing 47,000 students and 6700 staff.

UQU executive chef Craig Johnston said the new system offers the highest standards of food safety, which is simply not viably achievable with a manually-based system. “Food safety and compliance are some of the biggest issues facing any company operating in this space, but a lot of the work involved in achieving the standards required relied on far too much manual labour and was always vulnerable to human error.

“The new system we have implemented takes those risks away and give us the clearest, most accurate and time-effective information possible. It guarantees our standards are upheld,” he says.

The app is available for both Android and Apple devices.

Packaging News

Asahi Beverages says all plastic soft drink bottles it produces in Australia are now made from 100 per cent recycled plastic, excluding caps and labels. The conversion covers 350 million bottles a year.

Australian-headquartered, global fibre-based packaging manufacturer The Detmold Group has opened a 19,000-square-metre manufacturing and warehousing facility in India.

Orora’s Australian cans operation has delivered another year of strong growth, helping the packaging group maintain steady underlying earnings despite challenging conditions across the glass market.