The need to be sustainable affects all sectors, including food production. But while the industry knows it needs to reduce waste and adopt greener methods, the reluctance usually stems from fears of compromising performance.
James Culdwell, managing director of Ulma Packaging UK, explains how improvements in equipment mean that packaging is a key area where food processors can improve operations without compromising on-site productivity.
Energy prices and supply chain delays dominated the news agenda in 2022, but sustainability remains a key concern for the food industry. Indeed, environmental legislation has become stricter compared to last year, as in April 2022, the plastic packaging tax will charge organizations for using plastic packaging with less than 30% recycled content.
The food industry must therefore address this growing challenge. But to do so, it needs to work closely with experienced packaging equipment suppliers. This is especially true given the need to ensure efficiency, productivity and consistency in a business landscape that was already challenging before the introduction of more sustainable practices.
Thermoformers
Great strides have been made in thermoforming technology to reduce material consumption. In particular, the focus has been on reducing scrap around the edge of the package, with reducing package widths being a key priority. In particular, the pack skeleton has been highlighted as an area where savings can be achieved.
ULMA and material supplier SAC have made progress in this area, resulting in the development of the TFS 407R thermoforming machine. This model allows vacuum to be created through specially designed air holes in the bottom film as part of the Ulma Reduced Scrap innovation. The upper and lower leather webs further optimize vacuum quality and also allow for a 12% cycle time increase compared to standard Darfresh and leather machines. Importantly, this increased productivity is combined with improved environmental performance: up to 40% reduction in peel/scrap from individual packages and up to 4% reduction in film. Likewise, the TFS 216 ensures zero rejects, further reducing waste.
In addition, equipment suppliers are constantly working on solutions that are compatible with many materials to reduce the use of plastic. Two innovations developed as part of the #ULMAweCare initiative, LeafSkin and LeafMap, are prime examples of this. Each package is thermoformer-compatible and uses a flat, recyclable cardboard tray and contains an “easy open” angle for removing the lid and a “recycle” angle for separating different materials for whole and sliced products, respectively. Thus, material separation and recycling processes are greatly simplified, allowing for up to 80% reduction in plastic.
Traycylers
Advances have also been made with tray sealing technology to increase durability, ensuring that equipment remains robust, practical and highly productive. To achieve this, the use of materials is vital, especially as food manufacturers try to reduce their use of plastic. Packaging integrity has traditionally been a barrier to sustainable practices, as non-plastic media often stained and deteriorated during use in food.
With this in mind, barrier films are a viable way to introduce environmentally friendly environments without compromising on risks. Placed inside a tray as part of the packaging process, they can significantly reduce plastic by creating an additional protective layer, increasing durability. Thus, food manufacturers and processors using trays can significantly improve operational stability.
Ulma’s TSA series, for example, is compatible with this technology along with a variety of materials including polyester, cardboard, paperboard, and aluminum. In addition to being compatible with LeafSkin and LeafMap, equipment from this line can be scaled up from TSA 540 to TSA 1200 depending on packaging volumes, allowing companies to expand their sustainability credentials.
Verticals
For organizations that use vertical bagging solutions for food packaging, sustainability improvements can lie in improving the filling process. As a result, packaging equipment suppliers have ways to reduce the use of secondary packaging, with air venting technology being particularly attractive. In the past, air was removed from bags by adding perforations. However, in the food industry, this punching method can lead to potential contaminants entering the package – even through very small holes – and moisture loss.
Technologies have since been developed to remedy this, and Ulma has created the tight bag extraction method. Allowing for volume adjustment, the innovation uses a patented jaw arrangement in the cross-weld area of the packaging machine, resulting in smaller, fully closed bags and more units that can be packed into crates and pallets. As a result, transportation emissions are reduced and supply chain efficiency is also improved, and the likelihood of product damage is also less because it has less space to move around.
Additional sustainability and efficiency benefits can be found in the packaging of leaves and herbs. These delicate and lightweight products can present unique challenges, including molding tube blockage and contamination from leaves that are drawn into the seal. As a result, new solutions have been developed that address these issues while also reducing the use of packaging films, including the Venturi TM Ulma system.
Running 15-20% faster than a standard vertical line, this technology pulls products to the bottom of the bag using vacuum rather than the gravity-based methods previously used, eliminating seals, blockages and other motion-related issues. This improvement is also significantly greater than the horizontal flow wrappers traditionally used to pack leaves and herbs, running 25-50% faster. In addition, the acceleration of product delivery to the bottom of the bag reduces the package size by 15% due to the reduction in the required free space, resulting in less film being used. Vertical packaging machines can also be calibrated to operate at higher pressures and reoriented with different approach angles, reducing the risks of crushing and tearing of paper packaging.
Flow wrappers
This benefit also applies to horizontal flow wrappers, which can be adapted with paper kits to reduce tear issues by providing specialized feed systems on the machine to reduce material stress points. It is vital that specifiers at food manufacturers consult with packaging specialists beforehand to ensure that the right equipment is specified and purchased.
Companies are also increasingly opting for single-material packaging films due to their recyclability compared to traditional packaging. However, this poses challenges in terms of sealing the packaging on flow packs, as options such as mono-PP and mono-PE laminates have narrower optimal sealing temperature ranges than conventional materials.
As such, there is an increased focus on systems that can improve process accuracy and calibration on packaging machines, leading to solutions such as Ulma’s Better-Seal.
Innovations such as Better-Seal, developed as part of the #ULMAweCare strategy, will be key to the food industry moving away from multi-layer flexible packaging as a protective barrier. Instead, by choosing options where 90-95% of the packaging is made up of a single material, the transition to a sustainable circular economy can be accelerated.
Importantly, by using materials such as mono-PE, the advantages of traditional materials – physical flexibility, design versatility and high-quality protective products – will not be lost.
It is for this reason that Ulma’s Flow Wrapper series is compatible with the Better-Seal system and paper sets, providing excellent performance and hygiene characteristics along with these sustainability benefits. Additionally, these flow wrappers are compatible with automatic feeding systems, allowing organizations to exponentially increase operational consistency by increasing the volume of products packaged.
Automation
Automation offers another way to measurably improve the impact of sustainable operations, as labor shortages are leading more food manufacturers to explore secondary packaging options for loading products into crates, cases, or baskets. The introduction of these technologies on the packaging line can have indirect, secondary benefits for the environment, as the green practices and solutions discussed earlier can work more efficiently.
Consequently, these productivity gains further magnify any previous environmental benefits, including the reduction of materials and the replacement of traditional media with greener alternatives. In addition, eliminating skilled workers from tasks that can be automated allows for redeployment elsewhere in the production for greater impact, with the potential to increase efficiency by working smarter using a highly skilled workforce and eliminating any labor shortage issues.
Next steps
To summarize, it is imperative for food producers to make their operations more sustainable. Most factory floors can be adapted for this purpose, and packaging systems and processes are a particular area where the introduction of green practices can have a big impact.
Of all the suppliers in the packaging industry, Ulma Packaging (Ulma) stands out as the provider of the widest range of equipment suitable for all applications and products. With more than 60 years of experience and representation in more than 130 countries, Ulma offers a unique proposition as a Spanish cooperative. In addition, its ability to provide equipment and specialized advice across all sectors, including food production, means that the organization is well positioned to address sustainability issues, most notably through its #ULMAweCare sustainability initiative.