< Previous20 Food & Drink International www.fdiforum.net PACKAGING SPOTLIGHT Harkstead Hall Barn, Harkstead, Ipswich, Suffolk IP9 1DB Tel: +44 (0)1473 893990 Fax: +44 (0)1473 893995 email@penn-packaging.co.uk www.penn-packaging.co.uk • Case/tray Packing machines • Shrink Wrapping systems • Stretch-Film Wrappers • Depalletisers • Palletisers • Bag Closing Machines • Pillow pouch systems • Pre-made pouch • Stand-Up / Doypack • Slider/Zipper • Wet glue / PSL / hotmelt and combination rotary labellers carbon emissions. The approach, therefore, is to target the entire chain at once and not only to present an image of “window-dressing” to a brand’s efforts. By highlighting savings in several sections of the chain, today’s ever more savvy and aware consumers are more likely to accept that a brand is truly committing to their claims. Naturally, as packaging decreases or is replaced by recyclable material, so must everything relating to it, including labelling. It won’t be enough to reduce packaging elsewhere if labelling remains a contentious issue. Of course, it’s not as simple as doing away with labelling as legislation across countries and markets will demand certain information, requiring manufacturers to always have a certain amount of space to work with. QR codes and other forms of mobile-based technology have helped offer some alternatives, and they may in the future be acceptable as a single and only solution. Alas, while mobile phones are practically ubiquitous now, they are not so much so that everyone has one. There are still some, particularly the elderly demographics, that eschew or don’t know how to use them, and as such more traditional labelling will remain a DataLase launch new coatings range for laminated substrates DataLase, the global leader in Photonic Printing solutions, has expanded its coatings and substrate application offering by launching a new coatings range for laminated constructions called SB Lamination Coatings. The coatings, which are available in four variations depending on CO2 or fiber laser marking system usage, offer translucent to white and white to black colour change options. Suitable for a variety of end products, the coatings are designed for use in the laminated packaging sector in either solvent-based flexographic or gravure printing processes. The patch, which forms the middle part of a laminated construction between an outer layer of OPP, PE or PET and inner layers of barrier films to avoid direct food contact, can be surface printed or reverse printed to provide anti-counterfeit tamper- proof coding. DataLase’s CTO, Ally Grant, said: “As expected from our market leading coatings technology, the SB Lamination Coatings help eliminate consumables and waste from production environments, can help increase throughput, improve productivity and are scuff/rub resistant, thereby reducing potential rework and waste.” For further information visit www.datalase.com/sb-lamination-coatings/ Premier Foods reduces brand’s environmental impact by reducing the height of its Bisto Gravy paperboard drum Sonoco’s fully recyclable paperboard packaging solution will help Premier Foods to remove 40 tonnes of packaging used for its best- selling Bisto gravy drum, as it aims to reduce its environmental footprint Savan Sabharwal, Marketing Controller at Bisto says: “Reducing the size of our drum is a great example of how small changes can ladder up to make a big difference. We’re really pleased to have found a more sustainable solution while retaining the quality of Bisto that people love and expect.” Sonoco’s paperboard container is made from recycled paper fibre, including a paperboard end. All inks and adhesives are water-based, and all materials used in the packaging are easily separable within the recycling process. Philip Brown, UK Sales Manager at Sonoco Consumer Products Europe says: “Premier’s decision to reduce the height of the drum demonstrates its determination to give its customers a solution that uses less resources, while also giving them more of the products they love at the same great price, and with freshness and quality assured.” For further information visit: https://sonocoeurope.com/ 16-22.qxp_Layout 1 31/01/2022 12:19 Page 5Food & Drink International 21 www.fdiforum.net PACKAGING SPOTLIGHT UK aftersales spares and service support provided. www.robopac.co.uk Robopac, Unit 7 – 8 Highfield Parc, Highfield Road, Oakley, Bedfordshire, MK43 7TA Tel: 01234 825050 Fax: 01234 827070 Email: sales Turntable Wrapping Machines Rotating Arm Wrapping Machines Case Sealers & Erectors Self-Propelled Robot Wrapping Machines Horizontal Wrapping Machines See us at Stand J60 requirement. It may also remain as such even after mobile phones become so common as to assume every single person has one, because there will always be the chance the mobile is absent or left at home, and legal requirements are likely to remain that consumers must `always` be able to read important information. One solution to this has been folding- out labelling, labels that can be flicked or that fold out like a pop-up book to contain more information on less packaging space. This still uses as much material itself of course, but it can be affixed to a smaller surface area of product packaging. Sleeves are now a much more common sight, especially on ready meals, and sleeves can and often are made of recyclable material, with labels printed onto them. In the fruits industry, where sticker-based labels are notoriously small, some companies are innovating with the idea of edible labels, using sugar-based stickers to produce a perfectly safe, digestible solution to fruit-based packaging. While the effective purge of plastics and single-use packaging may be seen as damaging by some, it has opened up whole new avenues for innovation and diversity, allowing many companies to explore new routes and offer up fresh USP’s that distinguish them from the crowd. In the end, it will be the innovators and those willing to change that will reap the benefits, and those who wish to remain stuck in the past may find themselves consigned to it. © st ock. adobe .com/Maks ym Y emely ano v 16-22.qxp_Layout 1 31/01/2022 12:19 Page 622 Food & Drink International www.fdiforum.net PACKAGING SPOTLIGHT Want sustainable thermal packaging? 02476 420 065 kitepackaging.co.uk powered by employee share-ownership kitepackaging.co.uk 00002224444477666 444222000 0000666555555555 kkkiiittteeepppppaaaccckkkkkkkkaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaagggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiinnnnnnnnnnggggg cccooooo uuuukkk 100%100% Traditionally, the transportation of chilled food has necessitated polystyrene packaging. This material is notoriously bad for the environment by being slow to degrade and risking the creation of hazardous waste due to the chemicals involved in its manufacture. It’s large, bulky structure amplifies these issues by taking up a huge amount of physical space in landfill. Sustainability is at the core of Kite’s products and practices: in 2021 they achieved carbon neutrality across the business and continually prioritise environmentally conscious products over historic industry standards. Therefore, the employee share-owned company designed and built a corrugated cardboard box liner to match the insulating abilities of polystyrene. This solution, made from 125gsm paper, is 100% Kite’s sustainable solution to chilled packaging recyclable and boasts a FSC certification to attest to its responsible sourcing. To guarantee the safe and hygienic passage of refrigerated food, the liners had to perform as well as their environmentally harmful counterpart. Extensive testing shows that after 24 hours in an environment controlled at 23C, both materials recorded similar internal temperatures of -5.828C for polystyrene and -5.636C for the corrugated liner. Also revealed, was the double walled cardboard’s ability to keep the contents at a stable chilled temperature for approximately 31 hours. This robust internal packaging also provides excellent shock absorption thanks to the BC flute corrugation, reliably protecting your items from any knocks or bumps that may occur while in transit. It is time to slash your negative environmental impacts and cultivate long- lasting customer loyalty by advertising your commitment to environmental innovations. Making a sustainable swap to corrugated liners, that is, embracing plastic-free chilled packaging, will speak volumes of your general approach to social responsibility and drastically elevate your brand reputability. These factors will catalyse sales as consumers increasingly stipulate that goods must be transported sustainably. 16-22.qxp_Layout 1 31/01/2022 12:19 Page 7Food & Drink International 23 www.fdiforum.net CONTAINERS AND PALLETS With the industry- wide shift towards more durable and hygienic plastic pallets, to the rise of palletising collaborative robots (or cobots), the industry is continually evolving. Stop to bring a food and drink end of line packing operation to mind. The products have been manufactured, packed, and are now being loaded onto a pallet ready to be wrapped and secured before departing the warehouse or production facility. In this hypothetical situation, what was the pallet made from? There’s a good chance that it was wood. It can be difficult to replace the fixed image of a product that has served the industry well for decades. While wood might be what immediately springs to mind when one imagines pallets, they are hardly the standard across the industry anymore – and it’s not difficult to see why. With the best will in the world, wooden pallets simply cannot ever offer the same levels of hygiene as their plastic counterparts. This is due wood’s porous nature and grain offering a veritable breeding ground for a whole host of bacteria to thrive – including E.coli, Listeria and Salmonella. 24 Á Wrapped up © st ock. adobe .com/ A rtinun Wrapped up 23-25.qxp_Layout 1 31/01/2022 12:22 Page 124 Food & Drink International www.fdiforum.net CONTAINERS AND PALLETS Plastic, on the other hand, is resistant to these bacteria, not to mention fungus, thus ensuring that it is the foremost choice for food logistics. The very fact that plastic is not porous and completely smooth also means that pallets are waterproof and, critically, unaffected by humidity. This means that, unlike wood, their shape will remain unchanged and dependable throughout its lifecycle. When it comes to bulk dry goods – such as cereals, coffee, chocolate, and powders – this is paramount as even the smallest amounts of moisture can render an entire pallet’s worth compromised. Another major benefit over wood is that plastic doesn’t absorb odours or tastes, ensuring that the transported goods won’t have their taste or aroma profiles affected or altered in any way during transit. As well as offering ease of transport and reducing fears of product spoilage, plastic pallets are also very easy to clean. In the current climate crisis, there’s a reductive chain of thought that plastic = bad. In reality, things aren’t so simple, and definitely not so black and white. Although plastic undoubtedly bears some of the burden where our current environment situation is concerned, the worst offender is single use plastics (something the food and drink industry is admirably grappling with). However, a plastic pallet can be used hundreds upon hundreds of times whilst remaining as strong and durable as when it was first purchased. As wood cannot be effectively cleaned, it can’t be re-used whilst also being hygienic. In situations like these, opting for plastic is actually the most environmentally-friendly option. Certainty there’s room for improvement and, perhaps, as the bioplastics industry evolves and scales up, future pallets will be made from ever more renewable resources. But, in order to reuse a pallet, it first needs to be rigorously cleaned between shipments. It should go without saying that plastic pallets can be easily and swiftly cleaned with harsh chemicals and high temperatures without any degradation on the quality. There’s no two ways about it – plastic pallets trump wood in every single category. However, there’s always room for improvement. For example, relying on human workers alone to pack and wrap a pallet is an inefficient process, one that also comes with the risk of injury and accident for those workers. With the increasing demand for food and drink products, food manufacturers need to increase efficiencies and throughput wherever possible – and one of the key areas where companies can be experiencing major inefficiencies is palletising. To remedy this, an increasing number of companies are turning to automated palletising solutions and/or 23-25.qxp_Layout 1 31/01/2022 12:22 Page 2Food & Drink International 25 www.fdiforum.net CONTAINERS AND PALLETS collaborative robots (cobots) that work alongside human counterparts. As well as creating a safer, more efficient workplace, these solutions also allow manufacturers to meet labour shortages that have plagued the industry – especially over the last two years, with self-isolating and workers off sick with COVID. With industry working models evolving and labour shortages in these areas showing no signs of abating, an investment in automation is an investment in the future. The attraction to cobots should be obvious. They offer an effective, swift, and mistake-free solution, taking over repetitive and strain inducing tasks (such as lifting heavy loads). As many of the options available are also modular in nature, they can be easily integrated into existing operations without prolonged downtime. Yet despite the myriad advantages, many are still hesitant to invest. Of course, there is the investment itself to consider – yet the price continues to fall as the technology develops and they become more widespread. Yet there’s also a reticence, even a fear, of new technologies. While some of this fear comes with workers fearing for their jobs (something that cobots, which are specifically designed to work alongside humans, helps to avoid), some fear that they will not be able to grasp how they work, or don’t want the extended downtime they envision is necessary to learn how to use one. While some may be resistant to upgrade their palletising operations, especially for fear that automated technologies are difficult to grasp or that the required learning will mean extended downtime, many cobots are actually incredibly user friendly with software optimised to enable quick, easy set-up and deployment. Often, the software will store all the various box sixes and orientations and so on, requiring only the operating to select the set-up they need. © st ock. adobe .com/ sie w w y84 © st ock. adobe .com/k okliang1981 23-25.qxp_Layout 1 31/01/2022 12:22 Page 326 Food & Drink International www.fdiforum.net LOADING BAYS AND DOORS Keeping up with demand Fundamental to food and drink logistics, loading bays and doors are evolving to meet greater consumer demand, resulting in efficiency and safety gains. 26-29.qxp_Layout 1 31/01/2022 12:24 Page 1Food & Drink International 27 www.fdiforum.net LOADING BAYS AND DOORS The global food logistics market has been growing exponentially, yet it experienced a dramatic spike in 2020 at the height of the coronavirus pandemic, reaching a value of $101.1 billion. As this figure from market research firm IMARC Group reveals, the impact of the pandemic on this sector can’t be overstated. A surge in panic- buying saw the public flock to shops, leading to empty shelves and shortages of certain food and consumer goods. During successive lockdowns, a record number of shoppers were having food shops delivered to the door, resulting in many of the major supermarket chains struggling to keep up and resorting to rapidly expand their logistics operations with measures such as drafting in new drivers on a temporary basis and offering quicker delivery times. The increased footfall in both e-tail and bricks and mortar has seen a dramatic rise in demand for food logistics over the last two years, but while it can account for the lion’s share, it isn’t the only growth driver. In fact, there are a number of key market factors that have been driving growth since before the outbreak of COVID-19. Chief among them is the accelerated growth of technologies, particularly smart technologies & software (such as sensors, big data & augmented warehouse management), an overall shift in consumer shopping habits, and a focus on improving the customer experience. Of course, logistics is made up of important interlocking chains and the links in these chains are loadings bays and doors where products are loaded or unloaded to embark on the next stage of their lifecycle. Demand for products in stores or, in many cases, to consumer’s doors will necessitate greater use of loading bays but as can be seen elsewhere in the sector, there’s more than just the pandemic driving growth – especially as many legal requirements such as mask wearing are once again coming to an end. Suffice it to say that the sector is © st ock. adobe .com/ xar tpr oduc tion 28 Á © st ock. adobe .com/ V anderW olf Images 26-29.qxp_Layout 1 31/01/2022 12:24 Page 228 Food & Drink International www.fdiforum.net LOADING BAYS AND DOORS nothing if not adaptable. There has been a significant increase in technologies not only to make the process of arriving and backing up into a loading bay more efficient – therefore allowing goods to be loaded quicker and more deliveries to be made – but also safer for operatives. While slips and falls are the most common accidents to occur in loading bay environments, injuries can and do occur from trucks backing up, overexertion, and accidents involving forklifts. It’s believed that as much as twenty-five per cent of industrial accidents occur in loading bays, highlighting the pressing need to make these environments safer. Technologies such as sensors, which are being found increasingly in and around the loading bay area, not only lead to greater efficiencies and provide actionable data for operational improvements but provide a boost to worker safety. For example, sensors around the loading bay can alert operators when a truck is coming in too fast, too close or is out of alignment with the loading bay door, helping to prevent injuries and accidents (and reduce downtime that occurs in either occurrence). There’s also telescopic lips which provide an optimal range loading platform allowing for precise bridging for fast, efficient, and safe loading and unloading. Solutions such as these help to bolster existing safety measures such as buffers, to create a safer working environment. While worker safety is, undoubtedly, a priority, there is also the protection of goods to consider. Many products are 26-29.qxp_Layout 1 31/01/2022 12:24 Page 3Food & Drink International 29 www.fdiforum.net LOADING BAYS AND DOORS © st ock. adobe .com/ TT studio temperature sensitive, making them vulnerable to the elements and changes in temperature. Where frozen products are concerned, even miniscule changes in heat can lead to spoilage and deterioration. It’s critical, therefore, to preserve a consistent temperature so products can be loaded from the warehouse onto the truck without any defrosting. In order to do that, solutions such as dock shelters and loadhouses are required, both which extend the loading area either to preserve the temperature controlled environment and/or to keep out the elements. While there has been a lot of development where the loading bay area is concerned, it’s important not to forget the door. As they must withstand a constant barrage by the elements, they must be strong and durable enough, with as low a thermal transmittance, air permeability and water penetration as possible. Of course, security should not be forgotten. Buying cheap can lead to a door that can be easily broken into should thieves desire to target a warehouse. Investing in quality materials from a reputable manufacturer is an absolute must. Weaknesses and security vulnerabilities can be identified by undertaking a security audit to further strengthen the protection of the warehouse and loading areas. The growing demand for food logistics, and the increasing prevalence for last mile services, means that loading bays and doors will continue to evolve in order to meet the needs for consumers and customers in a safe and efficient way. 26-29.qxp_Layout 1 31/01/2022 12:24 Page 4Next >