A Total success

23 June 2010



Companies came prospecting for an all-important point of difference on the shelf and crucial efficiency savings at the UK’s Total Processing & Packaging show in Birmingham. Joanne Hunter and Maureen Byrne report.


Visitors to the Total show, held in Birmingham, UK, in May, left laden with ideas to grow their businesses. The seed for many a future deal was sown, and Ulma Packaging reported securing its first order before lunchtime on the first day of the three-day show.

A roll call of scouting brands included Airbus, Bentley and Rolls Royce, and some big names in food and non-foods, healthcare and pharmaceuticals, personal care and cosmetics, beverages and confectionery, as well as the UK’s top grocery retailers.

Walking away with the daily Design Challenge prize was Payne’s promotional message tear tape and Kinneir Dufort’s new approach to soap packaging, and Bandalero mini multipacks from CCL Concept and Developments. Bandalero offers potential to lightweight, manage carbon, cut waste and save money in the supply chain for dry goods from coffee to dishwasher tablets.

“We are very hopeful that this exposure will enable us to further develop and commercialise it,” said CCL consultant Michael Lewis.

Lighthouse Display, specialist in point of sale (POS) products, was surrounded on the stand by many of its 360 hanging strip designs aimed at enticing impulse buying. Vertical strips move products to cheaper off-shelf locations and marketers can quantify the impact using a dedicated product barcode. One consumer, Dormans Nuts, went from an unknown product to a £20 million-company in eight years, Hazel Winter, of Lighthouse Display, told Packaging Today.

Artenius PET Packaging Europe (APPE) has a dual colour process that uses injection moulding and multilayer technology to produce bottles with a graduated shade of two different colours, for an opaque or transparent effect. On display were bottles suitable for shampoos, liquid soaps and body lotions, and a 70cl spirits bottle.

“The process can also be used for food and juices to add a point of difference,” said Martene Spencer, Business Development Manager of APPE.

CAMA Group showed robotic machinery for packing into shelf-ready cases.

“Robotics drives efficiency,” said Chris Rayner, CAMA Operations Director, based at Swindon, and “We are supporting UK industry by the machines we are selling.”

The privately owned Italian company is thriving in the recession, with a turnover of €40 million in 2009, up from €16.5 million in 2003.

A machine with a compact footprint was set up to pack health bar-size products into cartons. Its carton closing system with patent pending technology needs a trained operator, rather than a mechanic, to carry out a simplified change-over.

Multivac machinery falls in line with the main packaging trends: food waste reduction, paper replacing plastics to cut oil use, extended shelf life, downguaging material, moves to flexible packaging and portion control, said marketing manager, Andrew Stark. He thinks Amcor Flextrus ticks a number of those boxes. Used for modified atmosphere (MAP) applications such as processed meat, it combines flexible plastics and ‘formable’ paper.

Further examples were pepperami in perforated ‘singles’; barbecue burgers in a skin foil pack; and sliced pizza pepperoni in a reclosable, triangular shaped pack.

Shrink film for whole chickens can cut packaging 68% and potentially add four daysto the shelf life, claims Multivac. All the air is pulled out, including from the cavity, before gas is added. The pack can be printed both sides and is completed with a tear tab.

Packagers of ampoules, vials and syringes are target users of a new monomaterial, paper-based Green Package Solution (GPS) developed by Bosch to be produced on standard, multi-purpose, horizontal cartoning machinery, to achieve lower cost and higher output.

GPS comprises a standard folding carton and inserts, which can take one, three or five of the same product type or a collation. They lock into place with a ‘click’, and are stable and secure, said Günther Lade, Bosch’s Senior Project Manager. A C-form sheet brochure is then slipped into the reclosable pack.

Labelling and weighing specialist Herbert unveiled its new Sigma range of label applicators at the show, which the company claims is ‘more versatile and future-proof than anything the industry has seen before’.

“With the new Sigma range we set out to produce a product that will address a broad range of top, base and side labelling configurations and would ensure that a customer would not become locked into technology that could become obsolete by the first change in their customers’ labelling requirements,” said Graham Dorney, Product Manager of Herbert.

Zero downtime auto-labeller changeover on multi-applicator machines, label low detection and alarms, and intelligent label web to conveyor speed synchronisation are some of the features of the new Sigma range.

World’s ‘fastest’

Italian manufacturer PFM demonstrated its new Super Nova bagging machine for modified atmosphere packaging, which is capable of speeds up to 250/min. The new machine has been developed to open up the advantages of extended shelf life economically to a wider range of high volume food products, such as cheese, pasta, snacks and bakery items, and derives its speed from electronic and mechanical enhancements that include a new design of high speed rotary sealing jaw. As a result, PFM believes the Super Nova to be the world’s fastest bagging machine for MAP.

The machine was shown operating with one of PFM’s latest multi-head weighers, the MBP SM16-C3, on which a second tier of memory weigh buckets ‘dramatically’ increases the weighting combinations available, giving higher speed and accuracy, according to the company.

Total was chosen at the venue at which to launch Baltimore Innovations’ ‘revolutionary’ SuperDryFoil, a ‘ready made’ desiccant foil pouch. This is designed for packaging moisture sensitive products such as medical devices and diagnostic test strips. By integrating a strip of desiccant (silica gel or molecular sieve), plastics film into a laminated barrier foil pouch, Baltimore offers a product ready for immediate use, while saving labour in production. The company’s desiccant plastics technology is covered by worldwide patents.

“A major advantage of having desiccant plastics film integration into foil pouches is its ability to be seamlessly incorporated right into the pouch package. This eliminates the need for new equipment, separate costly sourcing, additional handling and placement of other desiccant product like beads, sachets, canisters and lozenges, thus offering an innovative and very cost-effective solution,” said Ten Valentine, MD of Baltimore Innovations.

On the Romaco stand was the new HM 2/500 heat sealing machine by Siebler, which is said to be particularly useful in the handling and packaging of pharmaceutical strip tablets, called StripTabs. The complete product feed and cutting system was specially developed for processing this new medical form of application.

StripTabs, which are 60 to 100 micron thick, and made of peelable soft aluminium foil packaging, are produced at a speed of up to 1,500 items/min. After rewinding, the material is cut on a stamping station, where stamping takes place directly on the carrier film. This means that no cutting tolerances are produced during fluting, and this form of seamless stamping produces almost no product waste.

After running through the stamping station, the fluted product widths are drawn over a sharp edge – the dispensing tongue. This results in the individual StripTabs being released virtually automatically from the carrier film. The applications that are peeled off are then taken by a shuttle system and transported to the primary packaging film in rows of 10. The film tablets enter the 10-line sealing process, where film with a sealing width of up to 500mm is processed.

“From a technological point of view, the whole cutting process and the feeding of the wafer-thin film tablets using the shuttle system are absolutely unique,” remarked Martin Grau, Product Manager at Romaco Siebler.

A seminar programme gave a chance to discover innovations and debate the future of packaging with top industry minds who gave their thought-provoking views on the latest strategies to reduce environmental impact.

Nick Mullen, Director of the Metal Packaging Manufacturers Association (MPMA) remarked that UK retailing is intent on getting the carbon footprint down among its suppliers, but Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) cannot be relied on to make decisions. LCA remains unreliable and is ‘largely misused and abused’ and trials to assess four comparative models from respected companies gave results thatwere ‘random at best’, warned Mr Mullen.


Visitors scout for shelf impact and process efficiency at the Total show. Total 2010 Bandalero mini multipacks from CCL Concept and Developments: a Total Design Challenge winner. Bandalero Innovative technology has been used in the development of Romaco Siebler’s HM 2/500, which was developed to handle and package StripTabs. HM 2/500

Bandalero Bandalero
Total 2010 Total 2010
HM 2/500 HM 2/500


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