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Caffeinated security

Premier South African coffee bean supplier chooses Vivotek for demanding role.

TriBeCa is a prominent coffee bean importer, processor and distributor in South Africa. The company supplies a large number of customers, including one of the top food retailers in the country. This retailer makes extremely high demands on the quality of the coffee it sources and tolerates absolutely no foreign matter, for example, the small stones that often appear in bags of packaged coffee beans.

In order to ensure that it could comply fully with the retailer’s requirements and thereby retain this valued customer, as well as provide general security against theft, TriBeCa decided to install an advanced surveillance system.

Camsecure, a surveillance systems integrator designed the system according to TriBeCa’s requirements. Also, acting on the advice of Camsecure, TriBeCa chose Vivotek cameras, supplied by Sentronics SD in Midrand, for the project consisting of 22 IP7142 and two FD7132 cameras. Camsecure installed and project managed the entire project from start to finish.

Aside from installing cameras in its receiving, production, and dispatch areas, TriBeCa also has cameras dedicated to recording the X-ray scans of finished packaged goods that the company does as a final check for foreign material.

Technology supplied

According to distributor Sentronics SD, which provided the cameras for the project, the models were chosen because of specific features that made them especially suited for their eventual roles. For example, the IP7142’s WDR (wide dynamic range) CMOS sensor enables it to handle challenging high-contrast lighting conditions, so that it can capture both the dark and bright parts of a view in equally clean detail. This was a crucial advantage for recording the X-ray scans, an extremely demanding application that requires extremely clear captures of the scan images. Both the IP7142 and FD7132 cameras provide excellent day-and-night surveillance with their IR-cut filters and illuminators, necessary to both monitor operations during work hours and combat intruders at night.

Caffeine benefits

In addition to satisfying the rigorous picture quality requirements, TriBeCa’s new Vivotek-based surveillance system has proved a boon for worker productivity and safety as well. With the cameras monitoring the workspace, employees are respecting time limits on scheduled breaks and meals. They have also become more conscientious about adhering to regulations to ensure hygienic standards are met, faithfully wearing hair nets in processing areas, washing hands before entering these areas, and so forth. Rules designed to ensure worker safety, such as a ban on cellphone use while operating machinery, are no longer flouted.

Surine Thirion, coffee technologist and quality assurance manager at TriBeCa, calls the improvements in worker productivity and quality control that the Vivotek cameras have facilitated ‘huge’. She says the new system has not only performed to TriBeCa’s highest expectations in the roles for which it was originally envisioned, it has provided numerous other benefits as well.

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