Dryfo: Safeguarding Nuts and Dried Fruits with X-ray Inspection
Dryfo Bros. Menexopoulos S.A. is a third-generation family business based in Thessaloniki, Greece, specializing in the trading, processing, and exporting of nuts, dried fruits, seeds, spices, and pulses. Founded in 1950, the company has grown into a pioneer in the nuts and dried fruit industry in Southeastern Europe, sourcing raw materials from over 70 countries and selling to more than 50 countries worldwide. Dryfo operates modern production and warehousing facilities totaling 35,000 m² in Thessaloniki and Athens, serving wholesale trading, retail private label, food service (HORECA), and custom processing segments for the food industry.
The Challenge: Ensuring Food Safety Across a Complex Global Supply Chain
As a company sourcing raw materials such as nuts, dried fruits, seeds, spices, and pulses from more than 70 countries, Dryfo faces the challenge of maintaining consistent food safety and quality standards across a highly diverse and international supply chain. Handling bulk quantities of natural products increases the risk of foreign object contamination, which can originate at any stage before the products reach Dryfo's facilities.
Since 1950, Dryfo has committed to delivering products that meet the highest international standards, including BRCGS, FSSC 22000, and ISO 22000:2018. To uphold these standards throughout its operations—covering shelling, cleaning, sorting, color sorting, blanching/peeling, roasting, frying, pasteurization, flavoring, grinding, chopping, and packaging—the company recognized the need for rigorous, technology-driven quality checks capable of ensuring the safety and authenticity of every finished product before it reaches wholesale, retail private label, food service, and custom processing customers around the world.
Integrating X-ray Inspection into Facility Operations
Dryfo's facilities in Thessaloniki and Athens are equipped with cutting-edge processing and packaging machinery, designed to handle products under strict quality control and safety standards aligned with FSSC 22000, ISO 22000, and BRCGS guidelines. Among the range of operations carried out at these facilities—including shelling, cleaning, sorting, color sorting, blanching/peeling, roasting, frying, pasteurization, and flavoring—X-ray inspection is listed as a core part of Dryfo's production process, alongside grinding, chopping, and packaging.
By incorporating X-ray inspection directly into its facility layout, Dryfo reinforces the rigorous quality control checks and sampling plans it applies to raw materials sourced from over 70 countries. This step supports the company's broader food safety policy, which is built around minimizing non-conforming products, improving supplier performance, and reducing customer complaints—objectives that are assessed annually against these key performance indicators.
Implementation: X-ray Inspection Within the Production Line
Within Dryfo's manufacturing facilities, a Mekitec X-ray inspection system is integrated directly into the production line, positioned among the sequence of processing steps that include roasting, frying, pasteurization, flavoring, grinding, chopping, and packaging. This placement allows finished and semi-finished nut and dried fruit products to be scanned before packaging, ensuring that foreign material is identified and removed prior to products reaching wholesale, retail private label, food service, and custom processing customers.
The X-ray inspection step operates alongside Dryfo's other quality control checks and its carefully implemented sampling plan, forming part of the facility layout that has been designed to meet FSSC 22000, ISO 22000, and BRCGS guidelines. By embedding X-ray inspection into this broader quality infrastructure, Dryfo ensures that products handled under controlled humidity and temperature conditions in its 35,000 m² of warehousing and production space are checked for safety and authenticity before dispatch to markets in more than 50 countries.
Results & Benefits
By embedding X-ray inspection into its facility operations, Dryfo strengthens the quality assurance framework that underpins its certifications, including BRCGS, FSSC 22000, and ISO 22000:2018. This added layer of inspection supports the company's food safety policy objectives: minimizing non-conforming products, improving supplier performance, and reducing customer complaints—the very KPIs against which Dryfo assesses its quality performance each year.
With X-ray inspection operating alongside shelling, cleaning, sorting, color sorting, roasting, frying, and packaging processes, Dryfo is able to extend its quality control checks across the full range of nuts, dried fruits, seeds, spices, and pulses it handles. This consistency supports the company's ability to serve wholesale trading, retail private label, food service, and custom processing customers in more than 50 countries, while upholding the food safety standards that have defined its operations since 1950.
As Dryfo continues to expand its facilities—including the planned relocation to a new 40,000 m² production and warehouse site near the Port of Thessaloniki in 2025—X-ray inspection remains a core part of the infrastructure supporting the company's commitment to delivering safe, high-quality dry food products to its global customer base.