Prepared foods processor Simply Fresh Foods, Manchester, has adopted a new system of combined stretch-shrink-wrapping - pioneered by Japanese manufacturer Fuji - allowing the company to produce fully sealed over wrapped trays of products such as stir-fry vegetables and baby potatoes, part cooked in garlic butter.
Previously the trays were stretch-wrapped, but with the PVC film gathered below and tacked in place by a heated pad. “Our customers, the major retailers, are constantly demanding much higher standards of presentation and pack integrity,” said Alastair Clark, engineering manager, Simply Fresh Foods. “The Fuji stretch-shrink method gives us packs that are fully sealed for hygiene, neater than before and eliminates risk of liquids escaping.”
Simply Fresh Foods has installed three of the new Japanese built Fuji Alpha FW3462 stretch-shrink-wrappers, supplied by UK agent Paramount Packaging Systems with Fuji multi-belt feeders. The machines provide an initially tight wrap that requires little shrinkage, produce a bottom fin seal that is trimmed close to the tray base for a smooth appearance, and employ flow-wrapper style box-motion cross seal jaws to make a secure hermetic seal.
The shrinking operation, which tightens the pack slightly and pulls the end seals in neatly below the flange of the tray, is carried out by integral Cryovac CJ51 hot air tunnels.
“One of the main advantages of the Fuji stretch-shrink process is that consumer familiarity with the packaging style - the “just-prepared” look - is retained, but without risk of leakage from stretch-wrapped trays and the cross-contamination issues that retailers seek to avoid,” explained John Roberts at Paramount Packaging Systems.
No comments yet