FEATURE BARCODING, LABELLING & PACKAGING
Flexible friends: How automation is bolstering flexible packaging growth
Flexibles are knocking rigid packaging off the shelf. Paul Wilkinson, commercial and information systems manager at Pacepacker Services, explores the growth in films for food, the challenges, and how robotics and intelligent automation can contribute to their success
ood and drink research company Canadean forecasts that global flexible packaging for food will reach 800 billion packs by 2018, overtaking rigid plastics, board, metal and glass for the first time. Pouch packaging in particular, including standard and stand-up formats, has seen growth averaging around five per cent a year, and has led the way for flexibles of other types. Today, hard-to-open bags and pouches are the exception rather than the rule. Just a few years ago, flexibles were not only seen as being the antithesis of user- friendly, they were commonly considered to be a ‘cheap’ alternative to more traditional containers. Advances in seal and barrier technologies for the pouch market are keeping food fresher for longer at all stages of the supply chain, contributing to a better shelf life for both retailers and consumers. Even fresh produce achieves significantly longer life thanks to the combination of films and micro-perforation to optimise the in- pack atmosphere. These shifts in consumer perceptions of flexible packaging have allowed retailers and brand-owners to benefit from the supply-chain advantages that these materials offer. Despite the light- weighting process that glass, metal, board and rigid plastics have seen, flexibles remain the lightest and, generally, the most space-efficient packaging for supply-chain logistics. What flexibles gain in terms of reduced carbon footprint in production and
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Paul Wilkinson is the commercial and information systems manager at Pacepacker Services
logistics, compared with other formats, they had until recently lost in recyclability. But that, too, is changing. More monolayer films, such as polyethylene, are being collected, and this year, multinational brand-owner Unilever announced that it is working in Indonesia with German R&D institute, Fraunhofer IVV, completing a plant to trial multilayer sachet recycling on a commercial scale. Alongside the move towards flexibles, another trend in food and drink is the drive to automate downstream packing operations, often even at relatively low volumes. So, what are the implications of flexible pack formats when it comes to automated handling?
The Shingle Tray Loader (STL) from Pacepacker can be used to help pack human food pouches in the most efficient way possible
IMPLICATIONS ON AUTOMATION Rigid packaging is more likely to use robot pick-and-place with a gripper of some sort when being loaded into cases, trays or other secondary packaging. On the face of it, pouches would be ideally suited to vacuum end-effectors, and these are indeed often specified for this pack format. But there are limitations. Many vacuum systems will only grip a pouch on a flat side or face, and may not even achieve this if the contents are lumpy or irregular. Once the pack is gripped, it might be easy to place it flat inside a case, tray or crate, but what if you want your pouches vertical for transit? For fresh produce, especially, holes in
the film may make any vacuum contact impossible or difficult to achieve. That is why it is so important to work with an automation supplier which can trial different options for robotic handling, taking the time to find the optimum solution for the entire range of packs coming down the customer’s line. For example, only pack-specific trials will highlight whether air creepage renders the use of vacuum end-effectors impossible, or whether this effect can be compensated for with different tooling or a more powerful vacuum. Similarly, where different shapes and sizes of flexible packaging need to be handled, trials can show whether the same end-effector will cover all these
20 JULY/AUGUST 2017 | FACTORY EQUIPMENT
variants or, if not, how manual or automated tooling changeovers can be kept to a minimum.
ADDRESSING THE CHALLENGES Often, an automated solution originally designed for one type of product in flexible packaging will lend itself to solving problems specific to other categories. For instance, Pacepacker’s Shingle Tray Loader (STL) was first developed for the birdseed industry, but has since been applied to many types of human food. Flexible packs of loose or granular product will end up ‘pear- shaped’ when held vertically; this in turn limits the number of packs that can be fitted into a tray, case or box. The robotic STL addresses this challenge by forming the collation horizontally from an infeed conveyor, using gravity to maximise the number of bags or pouches, before swivelling the completed collation to the vertical and loading it through ‘bomb doors’ into the waiting tray, case or box. This approach has been used on lines packing products such as flour, but also wet noodles, where horizontal stacking might lead to lower layers of product being crushed and damaged. Robotic case loading will often replace
manual packing and, even where end- of-line space is at a premium, automated solutions can normally be engineered to fit. Today, brand owners can be reassured that there is no shortage of automated options available for the varied types of packaging on the market.
Pacepacker Services
www.pacepacker.com
/ FACTORYEQUIPMENT
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