English Village Salads and packaging equipment specialist Ulma is working on a solution to allow the Asda tomato supplier to pack tomatoes without the need for a tray or punnet.
Ulma is developing its Atlanta E horizontal form fill and seal flow-wrapper to wrap tomatoes in six packs securely at a rate of 120 packs a minute. It has a special integrated feed system to load graded, loose fruit onto the unit’s in-feed conveyor where it is then held in groups of six as it is moved through the machine and wrapped in plain or printed film.
Colin Howard, operations manager at EVS said: “EVS has always supplied tomatoes in six-packs with very thin trays for extra stability. However, as part of our aim to reduce packaging by 25 per cent, we decided to investigate tray-less options. We were already aware of Ulma and its equipment, and quickly realised the most efficient, reliable and certainly the fastest flow-wrapper available was the Atlanta E system. Other tray-less flow-wrappers exist but to hold the tomatoes captive, they operate at slower speeds. The company’s extensive experience of wrapping other loose fruit like lemons gave us even more confidence.”
Ulma’s machine can also work with a variety of films such as BOPP, PVC, polyester, cellulose, complex laminates and cold seal materials.
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