Happy World Nutella Day! It’s been a strange few months for this sweet treat spread. Considering a jar of Nutella is sold every 2.5 seconds, the love from consumers seem to be quashing any negative stories that have recently hit the brand.

 

First there was an almighty furore about the ingredients found within Nutella. Apparently, it came as a shock (?) that the deliciously sweet, chocolate and hazelnut based product was found to be high in fat and sugar.

The use of palm oil in Nutella then took over with alarmingly incendiary headlines that had little basis in scientific fact.

To top of their recent courting of the press, riots were reported in France when a major supermarket chain ran a serious discount offer on the spread.

In the interests of balance, there is an argument that the last story has a good PR spin. Nutella is so beloved that people will fight old ladies for the last jar…ok, so it’s maybe not the story they’d actively promote, but it does validate the passion people feel for this food

Of course, there are similar chocolate and hazelnut spreads throughout the world, and like Nutella, most are sold in glass jars.

As any manufacturer knows, the prospect of a customer finding glass within a food product (especially one so popular with children) is a recall and brand value disaster.

One such Sapphire customer, Prosto Petro in St. Petersburg, produces a similar product with great popular appeal in Russia. Their concern about glass finding its way into the production line is not unfounded. With rising reports of foreign items in food, glass is one of the more hazardous to health.

Prosto Petro became aware of the Sapphire system’s glass in glass capability and now run their chocolate spread jars through our x-ray inspection system before shipping, to ensure they are contaminant free.

Our systems can detect glass in glass as small as 2mm and makes sure it catches multiple views of the product to ensure a thorough inspection (a piece of glass is often long but thin, so a face on view may miss this, but a secondary view from an alternate position will ensure that it’s captured). Our super brainy bods who create this software are powered by chocolate spread breakfasts and therefore, took this project to heart and stomach!

We can’t be certain that anyone within the Kremlin enjoys chocolate spread at breakfast, but we rather enjoyed creating a sensationalist headline for once!

Oh, and for the record…..this is what happens if you eat only Nutella for a week (although this chap did introduce us to spooning Nutella into coffee, highly recommended!).