This year’s Total Show offered a timely reminder that we really do appear to be looking at a turn up in economic fortune. Visitors had a general sense of optimism and a purposeful demeanour while the presence of some very important European companies also supported the view that the UK is on the move again, and an interesting export market. From Endoline’s point of view, there was a lot of interest in our latest fully automatic, high speed case erector, the 248, designed specifically to handle shelf ready packaging (SRP’s).
SRP’s offer a number of benefits -not least improved product and brand identification, and in store efficiency. However, the cost of widespread adoption of SRP’s cannot be recovered at the retailer by increasing prices – this must be offset elsewhere by reducing the overall cost of goods on the shelf. This can be a complex matter and usually requires significant initial investment at several stages in the supply chain. The adoption of automation and robotics by food producers’ amounts to a substantial part of this investment, but results are dramatic as case packing systems can be designed to handle a variety of packing configurations and pack designs at high speed with zero errors yielding a net benefit to consumer; retailer and food producer.
Recent criteria set out by supermarkets to change the design of shelf ready cases to allow customers’ even greater ease of access to the product has brought automation to the forefront for many producers. Endoline can offer a range of modular automatic and semi-automatic case packing solutions to food manufactures. Designed with SRPs in mind, the new 248 case erector is a high speed, servo driven machine which also offers a crucial element to the packing solution and is readily integrated into a fully automatic line. It incorporates a gluing system to seal the bottom of each case as it is formed. The use of glue is essential with SRP’s as tape interferes with the functionality of the cases at the retailer, but it also supports the higher running speeds made possible by the use of servos while significantly reducing the cost of consumables by eliminating the need for tape.
Innovation within the food industry is driven significantly by the retailers, whose productivity is determined largely by the efficiency of its supply chain. The prevailing trend by retailers to make widespread use of shelf ready packaging is easy to understand in terms of operational efficiency, and Endoline has worked with both food producers and board manufacturers to engineer innovative new products designed to work efficiently at high levels of productivity with SRPs.
Endoline
Tel: 01767 316422
Email: sales@endoline.co.uk
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