A tower of pallets, the delivery of hot glue on demand for carton sealing and a resealable film lid caught my attention during Emballage 2014, and I discovered the environmental as well as other benefits of each.
Craemer’s plastic pallets not only offer a very hygienic, robust and convenient option for the supply chain, they also provided excellent building blocks for the round ‘castle’ tower on the stand. From the inside, the pallet tower allowed shafts of light to shine through the slatted patterns in each ‘block’ and illuminate the meeting area below to dramatic effect.
Fabien Spierckel, EMEA
After chatting to Sandra Kubler and Julie McIntosh of Craemer’s marketing team, I met with Fabien Spierckel on the Graco stand, where he pointed out how the Invisipack hot melt system heats the glue in just 10 minutes compared to the 45 minutes operators must wait for traditional systems to heat.
“Because the pellets are fed into the InvisiPac using an automated suction feed, and melted on demand, the Invisipac only needs a very small heating chamber for the glue,” explained Spierckel. “The glue is maintained at a constant temperature and the system therefore saves on energy and glue.”
Importantly, the on demand system avoids issues of ‘charring’ of the glue when it is heated for prolonged periods in traditional hot melt systems, which can cause the dispensing nozzles to block and cause downtime. I discovered that Graco specialises in fluid handling solutions and brought its expertise from other industries to the food and drink sector in the past couple of years.
Pooling its expertise with that of injection moulding specialist Naber is Sealpac, which is demonstrating its novel EasyLid film sealing mechanism for thermoformed packs on its stand. Richard Herry, commercial manager, Bretagne for Sealpac, showed me how the double seal mechanism attachs the film to both the ‘frame’ of the lid with an unopenable seal and then to the thermoformed pot below using less heat to give a peelable seal. In this simultaneous two-part sealing process, the Sealpac machine creates a thermoformed pot featuring a peelable film lid, which can be clipped back onto the pot in the same way as a standard lid to reclose the pot after opening.
Although introduced a couple of years ago, the technology has been adapted and perfected with the addition of pull tabs to communicate its easy opening mechanism, and is now being used commercially in France, the UK and the Netherlands.
Claire Rowan is group technical editor, magazines, FoodBev Media. This is a personal blog and views expressed are her own.
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