At your convenience

Jamie Oliver has opened our eyes to the culinary nightmare of school dinners, Nigella Lawson has amply demonstrated that cooking can be sexy and Gordon Ramsey has taught us more ways of using the 'F' word that might have been imagined outside of a building site.

Celebrity chef TV programmes attract viewing figures in the millions, while their books are bought, if not actually read, by thousands of people. But when it comes to practising what they've been preached, consumers are more inclined to pop a ready-made meal into the microwave than spend an hour at the stove assembling different ingredients. Even salads now come conveniently ready mixed and washed to go straight onto the plate.

With demographics pointing to an increasing elderly population at one end of the scale and a high preponderance of younger single-unit households at the other, the trend towards convenience eating is firmly established and certain to extend.

For a vast proportion of consumers, getting down and dirty with the inside of the oven for that now distantly remembered traditional Christmas dinner will have been a once-a-year experience they will be relieved not to repeat for another 12 months.

Real cooking for many is rapidly transmuting into a nostalgia trip. Taking the strain out of chopping the veg or tenderising the steak might be considered to be a sign of indolence by a few die-hards, but the drive towards making life ever more easy in the kitchen gathers momentum can only be good news for the packaging industry.

In no other sector has the pack so intimately melded with the product. Nor need all innovations be necessarily strictly original. Basic serves just as effectively.

Sealed Air has applied some imaginative lateral thinking to re-usage of fresh produce and bakery items. Already a major supplier of equipment and film to leading brands and multiples, the company has recently introduced an "easy open, easy close" technology to enable pre-packaged fruit, salad, prepared vegetable and bread products to be re-sealed for extended fridge and storage life.

A built-in teartape along the length of the pack is used for the initial opening which reveals the resealable flaps. Unlike some systems there are no tracks to line up and no "zip" to operate; the pack simply presses back together and it can be re-opened many times without compromising the adhesive's performance.

Easy Open Reseal can be used with any standard polypropylene film found on any horizontal or vertical flow wrap system and, subject to individual pack design, would not require packs to be altered.

It can also be applied to any horizontal or vertical flowpacking line via Sealed Air's specially designed applicator that takes the place of the film unwind systems associated with either type of wrapper, and is fully compatible with any flow wrapping equipment. In-line running speeds are not affected, and the system can even be used on gas-flushed packs.

Easy Open has already been adopted by Allied Bakeries, and the company is targeting UK and mainland European multiples – discussions are well advanced with Carrefour – with an eye on the fast growing in-store bakery business.

"People prefer packages that are easy to open," says Sealed Air's operations manager Colin Lovering. "With continued heavy investment amongst food producers striving to meet consistently high consumer demand and increased expectations, Easy Open Reseal is the next logical development for packaging in this sector.

"Sales of pre-packed fresh produce have been growing as consumers have demanded convenience and healthy eating. Allied to that, tamper evidence is an even stronger requirement than before; we believe that these factors combine to represent an exciting marketing opportunity especially in the pre-cut fruit and vegetables sector."

While salads and fresh-cut produce lend themselves ideally for bags, tray-based solutions are the more practical route for ready meals and meat products. D2 Europack has recorded a huge increase in sales of its range of conventional and bespoke smoothwall and crinkle aluminium foil trays and lids for the convenience food sector, says md Dave Edwards. "There's no magic ingredient; we just listen to our customers and deliver what they want: robust, functional and attractive packaging at the right price and on time."

D2's trays are available in a range of sizes, styles and capacities for added brand impact. They offer cooking properties unique to aluminium, which remains the only packaging medium unaffected by extremes of temperature.

The smoothwall containers offer optimum "oven-to-table" appeal and can be heat-sealed using an easy peel barrier film. Alternatively, a welded seal can be created using an epoxy coating during production. In addition, increased output can be achieved as the smooth rim allows the packs to run on high-speed fully automatic equipment requiring minimum handling. They also offer a hygienic solution for standard air closing and modified atmosphere packaging (MAP) options for extended shelf life.

Foil tray with integrated trivet

D2 has recently launched an innovative smoothwall aluminium foil tray with integrated trivet base. Specially developed for the convenience food sector, it replaces the need for a container and separate trivet-style insert and offers major hygiene, strength, cooking and cost benefits inc. allowing for excess liquid to drain away and air to circulate during cooking process.

The trivet container is particularly suitable for ready meals containing food ingredients with naturally high fat content – for example, meat, poultry and barbecue products. It also provides maximum on-shelf impact and 'oven to table' aesthetic appeal.

D2's Food Systems turnkey project management operation has recently been confirmed as sole UK distributor for Ulma tray sealing equipment, and is set to supply CP Foods (CPF) with a high speed, fully automatic Scorpius tray sealer for its Newmarket based new 22,000ft² frozen and chilled food manufacturing plant.

The Scorpius can accommodate a wide range of pack sizes and designs as well as food products containing several ingredients. It facilitates quick and easy changeover and offers modified atmosphere packaging (MAP) as an option. Other features include an in feed conveyor and intermediate belt for tray positioning. A reorientation system (converger), product positioning facility (diverger), enlarged loading area, tray destacker, mould-supporting carriage, centring feature and encoder are also available.

Leading German frozen food manufacturer Frenzel has also drawn upon turnkey project management expertise to install a comprehensive packing system for a new range of trays that enable frozen meals to be steamed cooked in the microwave.

Supplied by Ishida for Frenzel's Thuringia plant, the new "retail ready line" incorporates the entire product weighing and packing process – tray denesting, weighing, filling, checkweighing, tray sealing, metal detection, cardboard sleeving and automatic packing into cases. Output is 45 trays/min, with scope for further speed increases, and product/format changeovers take less than 10 minutes. The system is also flexible enough to be adapted to handle new tray formats or food products.

Operating at -8°C, product mixes are packed in 300g and 450g trays. Elevators convey four different types of frozen products to a 24-head Ishida multihead weigher for mix applications. The weigher selects product from a combination of hoppers closest to the target weight for each ingredient, and discharges a correctly balanced meal into the tray.

A second 10-head multihead weigher for single components adds sauces consisting of small balls of butter and, depending on the recipe, fresh sauces can also be added via separate sauce dispensers. Trays are fed beneath the weighers from an Ishida tray denester and filled via an Ishida filling system and twin sauce dispenser. The filled trays are then conveyed to an integrated checkweigher, which ensures that any over- or underweight trays are identified and automatically rejected prior to sealing.

On the Ishida QX 775 traysealer, a protective top seal is added to each tray and cut off exactly at the tray edges, resulting in optimised pack presentation and a 5% reduction in top seal film. During format changeovers what is claimed to be a unique system enables the sealing tool to be changed in less than five minutes and changing the top seal film takes no more than three minutes. The top seal trays then pass through a metal detector for additional quality assurance and a sleeving machine, and are finally packed into pre-erected cardboard cases for subsequent closing and palletising.

Also facilitating greater efficiencies in weighing and product handling of ready meals, Euroweigh has recently installed its four-head linear Speedweigh 311 system at FoodPro Manufacturing, whose general manager Matt Brindley commented: "The 311 machine was chosen because it is quick, accurate and uncomplicated. It can accommodate a 50% increase in our current line speed, with the potential of even greater speeds if required. The product weighing procedure is highly efficient and with the overall savings in production and manpower we anticipate it will be self-financed within 12 months."

The Speedweigh 311 system operates at speeds of 60 to 80 weighings/min depending upon the products being handled. Although primarily required to handle roast potatoes for FoodPro, the machine is also suitable for use with baby carrots, peas, sweet corn and other free flowing vegetables.

FFP Packaging Solutions is now supplying its Esterpeel lidding film for 11 different PP, C-PET and aluminium foil packaged on-tray products within the Prep Direct manufactured range of convenience meals for Waitrose. The two-ply film was required in both printed and plain format, and was supplied with an anti-mist coating to enhance on-shelf appearance.

Proprietary technology ensures that the gas transmission rates of the film match the specific requirements of each product to be packed. By optimising the gas exchange through the pack, shelf life is extended without the need for gas flushing.

Film size is also coming down, according to Joachim Nolte, product manager for Wipak's Walothen range of BOPP films, and the convenience sector will see a continuing trend towards the usage of lower weight and thinner film substrates. Whereas the industrial standard for cast PP was 30–35 micron three years ago, 20 micron and below is rapidly becoming the preferred norm" says Nolte, with consequent cost savings.