Mexico City — Thermo Fisher Scientific Inc.'s Mexico subsidiary unveiled the Sentinel multi-scan metal detector in the country at the Expo Pack trade show in early June.
Thermo Fisher Scientific México S de RL de CV had already sold one of the devices prior to the June 5 opening of Expo Pack México in the Mexican capital, according to a senior company officer.
Sonia Loeza Cortés, channel manager for Mexico and northern Latin America at Thermo Fisher's chemical analysis division-product inspection, described the buyer as the “largest Mexican pork producer” but declined to reveal its name.
“The Sentinel is revolutionary for food safety as we are able to see how a very small contaminant can affect food,” she said.
Thermo Fisher Scientific, of Waltham, Mass., launched the Sentinel at Pack Expo Las Vegas in September. According to the company, it identifies contaminants that are up to 70 percent smaller in volume than previous technologies, including the Thermo Scientific APEX 500 metal detector.
“With the Sentinel metal detector, it is like having five separate metal detectors combined, each looking for contaminants at a different frequency,” said Bob Ries, lead product manager, product inspection for Thermo Fisher Scientific.
Thermo Fisher Scientific employs about 2,500 in Mexico, 150 of them at its corporate offices in the capital and the rest at two facilities in northern Mexico, one in Tijuana making software and the other in Monterrey producing plastic containers for laboratories.
“We are present in nearly every single laboratory in Mexico,” Loeza told Plastics News.