Eriez has announced the receipt of a £100,000 ($165,000) grant from Innovate UK, the nation’s leading research and innovation agency. This substantial funding will accelerate Eriez’s groundbreaking research and development efforts in artificial intelligence (AI) for next-generation metal detection systems.

Gareth Meese, Managing Director of Eriez-Europe, explains that the grant will support a feasibility study aimed at revolutionising industrial metal detection in the food and pharmaceutical sectors. “By incorporating AI, Eriez aims to enhance metal detection sensitivity to levels comparable with X-ray technology, while maintaining and even improving the reliability of our systems,” he says.

Part of the funding will also be allocated to an eight-month research programme in collaboration with Cardiff University. Christopher Dyer, Lead Research and Development Electronic Engineer at Eriez-Europe, will oversee a team of experts from both Eriez and the university, including several Ph.D. researchers.

This initiative builds upon Eriez’s ongoing partnership with Cardiff University, which has been instrumental in advancing the company’s technological capabilities. Their most recent collaboration led to the opening of Eriez at sbarc, a cutting-edge research and development facility at the Welsh university. The partnership also played a key role in the development of the new Eriez MetAlarm metal detector, designed specifically for the aggregates industry. Launched in Q2 2024, the MetAlarm is a major leap forward in signal processing technology.

For more information about sbarc|spark at Cardiff University, visit www.cardiff.ac.uk/campus-developments/projects/spark.