Established in 2014, Xnext now has 50 employees on its books, spread over its two offices in Milan and Le Mans, France, and new facility due to open in Germany, which produces X-ray vision systems compliant with non-destructive inspection and testing techniques commonly applied in the aerospace industry. Developed from an original idea, XNEXT now supplies a solution that is unique worldwide and is currently installed in 50 locations in Europe, more specifically in France, Slovakia, and Italy,  with market developments expected in the United States during the second half of the year. Its disruptive technology and the speed with which the market has accepted the solution offered demonstrate the ambition of XNEXT, which aims to become a global leader in X-ray inspection systems for the food, pharmaceutical, and recycling industries. The company's CEO and founder, Bruno Garavelli, takes us through it.

What technologies are you focusing on in this period?

“Our company originated from a series of research and development experiences” Garavelli begins “which is why we view technology as an opportunity for companies to enhance their production processes. In response to  confirmation from various areas that the market does not yet offer systems capable of the same performance in detecting foreign matter deep inside a product, we have created with XSpectra®, the most advanced inspection solution in the world.  The quality of our technology is clear in terms of both performance and the production chain. Indeed, we supply a fully finished ready-to-use product that is straightforward and reliable, with a wide range of applications in all areas of food processing such as dairy, stuffed pasta, processed meat, ready-made sauces, and spreads but also in packaging, such as cans, bags for biscuits or  lettuce, and bottles.”

What are the plus points of your product?

“If you think that before we arrived on the market, systems featuring X-ray technology had not changed in over forty years" Garavelli goes on  "XSpectra® has introduced a revolutionary capacity to reveal  foreign matter such as plastic, insects, wood, and light contamination in general that are undetectable with today's solutions. We therefore allow customers to supply a perfectly healthy product because they can detect and  therefore eliminate the vast majority of forms of foreign matter that were previously undetectable. The strengths of XNEXT lie in its aerospace origins,  in particular in the development of x-ray and gamma ray detectors for astronomy, and in the fact that it has brought techniques and materials used exclusively in this sphere into a new realm, industrial testing and control. Just think, for example, of photon counting, an x-ray and gamma ray spectrometry technique  which is typically used in the world of scientific applications.”

What is your vision of the current and developing market for vision  systems?

“Any time a disruptive technology enters the market” Gravelli continues, “the market may initially find itself unprepared to accommodate new technologies, but resistance does not  generally last long and once the advantages have emerged there are no further barriers to its success. One particularly emblematic example is the monitoring of bagged salads,  the effectiveness of which (given the quality we can guarantee with XSpectra®) is spreading by word of mouth among customers and prospects. Therefore, although the manufacturing sector is at a standstill due to the international crisis, we are confident that there will be a surge in growth in the near future,  to which our systems will make a revolutionary contribution. The next markets that XNEXT will be targeting  will undoubtedly include the pharmaceuticals industry, where we are working on a technical development that will allow detection of smaller quantities than in the food industry."

What is the outlook for your technology?

“XSpectra® offers real-time spectroscopic technology that performs a pixel-by-pixel analysis of the spectrum to detect otherwise undetectable chemical and physical characteristics” ends Garavelli. “Developed by XNEXT in Milan, it incorporates the most advanced hardware and software available today. The machine comprises a multispectral x-ray detector providing up to 1024 energy levels and software based entirely on artificial intelligence that exploits all the machine's characteristics when processing the result of the x-ray photon counting.
IPACK IMA 2025 will be an important event for us to showcase our latest products and the most recent developments in our technology.”