Baking & Snack - April 2009 - 82

BAGGING MACHINES

In the

Bag
BY SHANE WHITAKER
hen consumers walk down the snack aisle at
the supermarket, they will most likely notice a
wider variety of packaging formats than were
available five years ago. Whereas pillow packs
dominated snack packaging for many years, today gusseted, block-bottom, quattro and 4-sided seal bags can be
found on the shelves. Many of these different packaging
styles are made on vertical form/fill/seal (f/f/s) machines,
a technology that has been used by snack manufacturers
for years but is now being updated eith new capabilities.
"The trend lately has been has been customers asking us to retrofit their existing assets with different formats for the bags," said Jeff Almond, snack food industry
manager, Heat and Control, Hayward, CA. The company
helps snack food manufacturers maximize their existing
assets by retrofitting their continuous-motion vertical
f/f/s systems to create these different packaging formats at
an affordable price. "It gives them an opportunity to have
more formats for less capital investment," he added.
Block-bottom bags are not new. "Cookie companies
and others have been running them for some time," Mr.
Almond said. "However, these bags have traditionally
been run in an intermittent-motion format, and that is
very slow. You couldn't get the speeds that were needed or
the efficiency, and there was very high waste."
Mark Lozano, national sales manager, TNA North
America, Coppell, TX, agreed that processors are most
interested in versatility for their vertical f/f/s machines.
"Flexibility of the bagger to do more formats than just
pillow packs or specific bags that the machine might be
purchased for is extremely important," he said.
In addition to versatility, processors desire vertical
f/f/s equipment that is easy to use, can help companies
to expand their shelf presence and assists with sustainability initiatives.

GREATER VARIETIES. Last year, TNA introduced its
newest bagger, the Robag 3. This high-performance vertical f/f/s machine features kanga jaw technology, which
allows it to produce high-quality specialty bag formats as

The newest generation of vertical form/
fill/seal machines offers increased
versatility and reduced waste.
well as long-bag applications for products such as cereals.
The kanga jaw is powered by a linear motor and adds an
up-and-down motion to its rotating jaws. This additional
movement of up to 120 mm allows jaw path control so
the jaws approach each other on a horizontal line.
"The kanga jaw gives you all the options for speed that
you get with our standard rotary machine, and it gives
you the ability to also do all the specialty bags on the
same exact format," Mr. Lozano said. "Literally, you can
push a soft button on the touch-screen controls and turn
off the kanga function and run 150 or 200 bags per minute, and you activate the kanga to run a quartto or other
specialty style bags on the same machine."
The majority of snack food manufacturers have already updated intermittent-motion machines running
60 bags per minute and replaced them with high-speed
vertical f/f/s machines running at twice the speed. Now
that they have achieved greater capacity, they are focused
on continual operational efficiency, according to Mr. Almond. In other words, "how can we continue to reduce
waste and give ourselves more flexibility," he said.
Heat and Control improved its continuous-style
equipment to do some of these various products in a
continuous format, he said. "We have increased machine

ᮡ Recent improvements to this vertical
form/fill/seal machine allow it to run a
wider variety of packaging formats.
HEAT AND CONTROL

April 2009 / BAKING & SNACK

Baking & Snack - April 2009

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