Pack up your troubles

Mar 28, 2023 | Packaging, Featured Content, Front Feature

Suzanne Callander looks at a variety of different confectionery packaging projects to demonstrate how modern technology is helping overcome many typical packing challenges facing our sector.

Packaging has always had a crucial role to play in the confectionery industry, helping to preserve the quality and freshness of products for as long as possible. Packaging also has to fulfil the task of ‘selling’ the product to consumers, with attractive and interesting designs to make it stand out on retailer’s shelves. And, it also needs to provide necessary information such as nutrition facts and ingredients.

Added to these challenges packaging today also needs to tick the sustainability box, as consumers become increasingly aware of environmental issues and are demanding more eco-friendly packaging solutions.

To overcome these challenges, confectioners need to focus on modern technology which is included in the latest packaging equipment. Automated packaging systems, for example, can help improve the speed and efficiency of the packaging process while also helping reduce waste. Importantly, it is necessary today to have a packaging solution that can offer the flexibility needed to work with the new breed of sustainable packaging materials and which can offer fast changeover times to keep up with the demand for greater product variety.

The secondary packaging requirements of chocolate producer ICAM offer a good demonstration of the importance of technology and flexibility. In 2007 ICAM set itself a goal of doubling production capacity to become a leader in organic chocolate.

“We needed to design a facility suited to the quality, certification, and traceability requirements that the world was asking us to provide,” says Antonello Ercole, Production Director at ICAM. “The result was a fully automated factory, which was acknowledged as the first 4.0 company in Lombardy.”

With 700 recipes and 3,000 different bars, 50 varieties of cultivated cocoa and products that reach store shelves on five continents, consistently guaranteed traceability, safety, and attention to quality are key for ICAM throughout its factory.

When it comes to packaging, ICAM has worked hard to convert 95% of its packaging into recyclable or compostable materials, such as aluminium and paper. “The challenge here was to identify, choose and design the best machines for the new types of materials,” says Antonello. “With our partner, the Cama Group we created innovative lines adapted to meet the needs of chocolate – which is very different from many other food products!

“For our secondary packaging operation, we need maximum flexibility,” continued Antonello. “Our production lines often work 24/7 and each day on each line we can change the product type up to six times. In addition to flexibility, we also need traceability, so we need to have full connectivity with the rest of the production line and Cama has helped us achieve this.”

In another chocolate bar packing application, a confectioner wanted to package a new range of tablets and bars using just one machine. It needed an all-in-one solution that offered maximum flexibility and high performance when packing a wide range of products and configurations.

Cama’s solution for this project comprised a tailored version of its Monobloc top-loading case packer. Capable of receiving products from the preceding flow wrapper at a rate of 950 ppm, the machine takes flat case blanks from a magazine and erects them before transferring them to the loading stations. Here 2-axis robots – designed by Cama – pick the confectionery products from a grouping device and load them into cartons. Once the cartons are filled, they are closed and sealed using another robot.

“This application was particularly challenging,” explains Alessio Borgo, key account manager at Cama Group. “In total we had to cater for 35 different product sizes and formats, so flexibility and agility were at the top of the customer’s wish list. We also had to balance throughput with agility. Packing at speed is easy but doing it with care and attention to avoid waste and damage takes a lot of expertise and knowledge.”

In addition to supplying the secondary packaging technology, Cama’s packaging design team was also able to improve the existing carton design. “The original carton was of a two-piece design with an inner tray,” explains Alessio. “We were able to redesign this, replacing it with a single flat-blank based carton which offers savings of between 15 and 20% in packaging materials. With sustainability being a crucial metric today this saving equates to a huge reduction in material use.”

Savings were also achieved in the changeover times. “We worked hard to develop streamlined changeovers. Downtime is unprofitable and with so many variants changeover-related downtime could become even more so. Using guided systems and RFID identification, we were able to offer changeover times as short as just 10 minutes,” concludes Alessio.

Sustainability was top of mind when Violeta acquired biscuit producer Lasta. It quickly set out to ensure maximum sustainability of packaging solutions for the Lasta range of wafers and biscuit rolls.

In addition to ensuring flexibility, Violeta wanted a packaging equipment solution that would offer high mechanical stability and a long service life, even with heavy-duty utilisation. Another requirement was simplicity of use as unskilled operators would need to be able to operate the line just as reliably as skilled personnel.

In practical terms, the packaging solution would need to be able to handle a variety of display cartons and cardboard trays together with both single-pack and multi-pack flowpacks, and they had to be as sustainable as possible because, in addition to new display cartons, the Violeta packaging development department had also created a sustainable design for cardboard trays with dividers.

For the flowpacks, Violeta wanted to use paper-based packaging material, which Schubert’s packaging solutions were able to work with, thanks to the flexible sealing technologies in its flowpackers. In terms of equipment, Schubert supplied Violeta with three robot-assisted machines for the Lasta packaging line – a flowpacker, a cartoner and a casepacker.

Today biscuit rolls and wafers from two ovens move into the flowpacker. In a counterflow process, pick & place robots place the products into cardboard trays which are then packed into multipack flowpacks made of paper-based film. Next, the individual flowpacks or multipacks are packed into display cartons by the cartoner. The excess product from the flowpacker is further packed in an additional pouch packer. Finally, the casepacker packs the pouches into display cartons with lids.

Violeta had initially planned to use plastic trays. It was only when the decision was made in favour of sustainable cardboard trays that the erecting of trays was also integrated into the system and planned with special forming shoulders for the paper-based film. The Schubert solution succeeded in achieving a significant increase in productivity – instead of the previous 20, up to 44 metres per minute are now possible. The result is an output of up to 520 products per minute with four different formats.

The casepacker for packing the pouches needed to be modified to be able to fully cover the maximum output of the ovens even without the flowpacker: Thanks to a new format tool, the Schubert designers were able to increase output from 80 pouches per minute to a maximum of 110 pouches per minute.

To help it increase packaging capacity at its Finland-based chocolate factory, Orkla needed a new packaging solution. It had been using two rather old packaging machines to wrap chocolate pralines. These had reached the limit of their performance as they could no longer keep up with the high output of the chocolate moulding line.

The machines were only able to wrap one-third of the products that came off the production line, with the other two-thirds needing to be placed into temporary storage and transferred back to the packaging process when production was completed. This process needed to be improved and Orkla approached Theegarten-Pactec for a solution.

“We first discussed various packaging solutions with Orkla in very general terms back in 2015,” says Daniel Schibur, Head of Sales at Theegarten-Pactec. “We then picked up the conversation again in 2018 and thought about how we could help the company increase its packaging capacity.” The initial discussions were about replacing the two lower-performance machines with two modern packaging machines from Theegarten-Pactec. Each machine would need to wrap 1,200 products per minute efficiently and gently to get the moulding line’s entire production volume wrapped to remove the need for any intermediate storage of the products.

However, during the discussions, Orkla’s focus turned towards another alternative when Theegarten-Pactec told the company about its latest customised packaging solution, designed specifically for chocolate products and capable of various types of wrapping. The packaging machine had already been through intensive tests at Theegarten-Pactec’s German headquarters and it was looking for a partner to take part in industrial trials of the new machine.

“We were excited about the prospect of getting an even more powerful packaging machine and agree to trial one of the new machines in addition to one of the original machines we had looked at,” says Arto Liimatainen, Technical Manager at Orkla.

The new packaging machine has been developed specifically to wrap chocolate products gently. In addition to the general function tests, the machine’s two-lane infeed was tested at the Orkla site.

One of the main challenges of this project was the separation of products from the continuous product flow on the main belt into the machine’s two-lane infeed while ensuring a constant balance between the two lanes. Each of the two infeed lanes has to be supplied continuously with 900 products per minute. In the wrapping process, both lanes are merged into a single-lane flow of 1,800 products per minute.

This problem was solved thanks to an integrated camera system and sensors positioned in just the right places, which constantly check the incoming product flow on the main conveyor. The same applies for the products on their way from the main conveyor to the packaging machine. This enables the control system to determine exactly how many products are on the two-lane infeed at any time, ensuring that the difference between both lanes is never more than five products. This allows the machine to achieve an output of up to 1,800 products per minute for the double twist wrapping style.

Although double twist wrapping is currently the only packaging style being used to wrap Orkla’s chocolate products, the machine can be adjusted flexibly to handle nine different packaging types – double twist, protected twist, top twist, side twist, foil wrap, bottom fold, side fold, Vienna fruit fold and envelope fold.

Orkla is happy with both of its new machines: “The packaging machines have given us outstanding results all along the line,” says Arto Liimatainen, Technical Manager at Orkla. “We have finally been able to increase our packaging capacities.”

All these projects ably demonstrate the benefits that modern technology and digitalisation can offer. Importantly, it can make production lines more flexibile, which is key for confectioners today.

Next month, in our April edition, Kennedy’s Confection will be publishing its interpack preview, highlighting what’s new and exciting in the packaging sector. The exhibition will finally be going ahead as a physical event again, early in May this year, following a longer than usual hiatus due to the Covid pandemic. The exhibition will provide a great opportunity to talk face-to-face with a variety of equipment and technology providers to discuss your own challenges and hopefully find solutions too.

Moving to less plastic for Christmas Fazer launched a chocolate 2022 Christmas calendar made from lightweight and recyclable dispersion coated paperboard from Metsä Board. This change reduced its plastic use by 1,200 kg, when compared to the PE coated board previously used. It will also improve recycling of the calendar as the wood fibre can be fully recycled.“Climate change mitigation and the circular economy are important themes for Fazer. The material change for our 2022 Christmas calendar is part of Fazer’s responsible packaging programme which consists of three elements – reducing the amount of packaging materials used, developing new types of more ecological packaging solutions, and improving the recyclability of packaging,” explains Piia Soininen-Tengvall, Packaging Development Director at Fazer.

Editorial contact:Editor: Kiran Grewal [email protected]

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