Metal detectable plastics 

The detection of foreign bodies plays an important role in food processing and packaging to ensure the safety and quality of food and to avoid contamination by plastics. With the detectable materials developed by Ensinger especially for the food industry, plastics can also be detected by metal detectors, ensuring maximum safety in production.

All food grade plastics in the ID (inductively detectable) and UD (ultra-detectable) series are manufactured with special additives so that they can be detected by a metal detector or additionally by X-ray detection. Due to their high visibility and quick detectability in production, blue materials are much more suitable than other colored materials. For this reason, we offer these products in blue as standard. This ensures that any fragment can be quickly identified in the event of breakage of a component made of one of these materials during production. 

Stock shapes are detectable with a metal detector, allowing greater safety in food production. Metal detectable stock shapes are available in the form of round rods and plates in many different sizes and variations to meet various application requirements:

• TECAPEEK ID blue, based on Victrex's PEEK polymer, offers high mechanical strength, excellent chemical resistance and can withstand high operating temperatures.

• TECAFORM AH ID blue and TECAFORM AH ID grey are the most widely used food contact plastics in the field. This acetal plastic for food contact provides high dimensional stability and good machinability - properties required for the manufacture of precision components. Its high resistance to sterilization and low moisture absorption make this material ideal for many different applications in the food industry.

• TECAMID 6 ID blue: This blue nylon features very high tensile strength, further reducing the risk of small component splits. 

Ensinger's UD Series also contains a special additive package that makes these products metal detectable plastics, among other things. The blue coloring, also found in many of our other food-grade materials, aids in visual detection, while other aspects of the formulation also enable X-ray detection. These features make Ensinger's ultra-detectable plastics the most versatile detectable plastics on the market today.

• TECAPEEK UD blue is PEEK-based and offers the best thermal, chemical and mechanical properties of any food-grade material.
• TECAFORM AH UD blue uses an acetal copolymer as the base polymer and is the "workhorse" of the product family - equally suitable for structural elements and wear-intensive applications.
• TECADUR PBT UD blue is a PBT polyester and is ideally suited for applications where chlorine-containing and corrosive solutions are used. 

Detectable compounds from Ensinger also bear the ID designation in their names. In contrast to the ID series of Ensinger Stock shapes, however, the compounds are not only inductively detectable, but also X-ray detectable.

All products meet the strict requirements of the food industry and are subjected to migration tests that comply with Regulation 10/2011/EU. The raw materials used also comply with FDA requirements.