Why cellars and brewers need medical -legal engineering

March 14, 2025 – The collapse of the wine tanks at Darling Cellars in 2021 made industry news, and when criminal metallurgists were called to analyze what happened, they found that poor production caused the failure, resulting in massive losses for the wine business.

It is not an isolated incident. Namaqua Wines suffered in a similar way. The team that helped these companies find solutions was driven by Materials engineer Dr. Janet Cotton of local local forensic metallurgy company One eighty degrees.

The need for medical -legal analysis in the food industry and beverages is clear. It is important to know why things broke to prevent them from failing in the future. “The failures happen in the building materials,” explains Dr. Cotton, so you have to be able to look at the failure, the fractured surface or the failed area, to give you clues about why the failure took place. You need to know why and how materials behave under stress.

To discover “whodunnit”, various metallurgical analysis and engineering tools are used, including high -tech analysis tools, such as electronic scan, mechanical testing, traction testing, impact testing and hardness testing. And a part of the training as a material engineer is to learn how to use these techniques and how to interpret the results. “Some of the very advanced investigation tools are the transformation of Fourier, infrared spectroscopy, X -ray diffraction and microscopy of the atomic force,” explains Dr. Cotton. “I could continue and be very pleased with the number of fantastic diagnostic tools available for us, but the thing about being a qualified material engineer is that you have to understand how these methods work. You need to know how to interpret the information and, if you can’t do it correctly, you can make a weak judgment about what you see and interpret from results and data. “

In his career, Dr. Cotton is the most proud that he has applied some of these techniques to solve the hot water line, by the stress of the brewery in South Africa, in Newlands, in 2002. Its recommendations continue to be strong today, after they have robust over their 20 -year anticipated life.

On the bottling side of the food and drinks industry, Consol Glass benefited from an increased longevity for their molds that blow the glass, taking their advice.

Now, Dr. Cotton is in a new mission: to make his field better known in this country. “The problem we have in South Africa is that people do not really know about, understand, perceive or consider the value of the forensic analysis of the root cause.” Recently, he launched the first conference for the root causes of the country, which worked at the Vineyard hotel in Cape Town, between 11 and 14 March. The line of speakers presented a series of global and sub-Saharan leaders and experts. To find out more about the event and this specialized area, visit https://www.one-eighty-degrees.com/.