French inspection solutions specialist Iris Inspection machines has recorded a 20% improvement in sales for 2019.

It said increased global demand for the company’s non-contact glass container inspection technology had required manufacturing capacity to be doubled during the final quarter at its headquarters on the outskirts of Lyon.

The expansion was made possible by the acquisition of additional premises and the relocation of production/assembly operations last year and by hiring additional, multi-lingual engineers.

At the heart of the business increase is the success achieved for NEO EVO5 and EVO12 inspection machines in recent months.

The Industry 4.0-compatible equipment has received widespread glass industry acceptance, generating multiple orders, in particular from European and Latin American glass packaging producers.

Already, 320 machines are running NEO software throughout the world, with excellent customer feedback generated for the defect approach adopted. Glassmakers are particularly impressed by the technology’s accuracy and user-friendliness.

The equipment delivers valuable features that help glass container producers to save time during the manufacturing process.

Every setting has been designed to be handled by the machine itself, making the equipment less dependent on human operators. Evolution NEO recognises the article and its exact shape, automatically drawing the inspection zone.

This simplifies job changes and reduces the human error factor. The equipment allows operators to follow defect rejection rates, while also bringing their immediate attention to the most significant information analysed by the machine.

In addition, within its statistical tools, Evolution NEO integrates a helpful set of different data, including time, mould number, images etc.

In total, there are now more than 1400 operational IRIS inspection machines in the field, with NEO designs increasingly specified as the equipment of choice.