Snack World - November 2014 - 26

Ross Long, vice-president of sales
and marketing for KW, said SFA
facilitates dialogue between KW
and snack companies.

manufacturers regarding the challenges that the industry is facing," Mr. Long explained. "It's not just a domestic
audience perspective that we get through SFA. It's a
global perspective. Through our active engagement
with SFA's trade show and meetings, in addition to our
direct sales force contacts with individual companies,
we have a good grasp on what issues the market is
struggling with and where we think things are headed."
There has been plenty to anticipate as consumer
and industry trends have dramatically evolved over the
years and continue to do so at a rapid rate.
"When I started some 35 years ago, the standard
production rate for 1 oz of potato chips was about 55
or 60 bags per minute (BPM)," Mr. Long recalled. "It was
unimaginable that you could package potato chips at
90 or 100 BPM back then, but today the reference speed
is 120 BPM for 1-oz bags and faster on some products.
KW has always been at the forefront of this, and we've
worked to push these limits further."
Package size and format flexibility also has become
increasingly important, Mr. Long noted, as manufacturers tailor their product offering to meet individual
consumer tastes.
"Now it's, 'What does my customer want to buy?'
and the snack manufacturer will make it,'" he said.
"That is the single most defining change in the business that we have witnessed. In the past, when manufacturers produced four sizes of bags, that's what
they brought to the marketplace. It was easier for a
packaging machinery company to design machines
around that specification."
Today, that is no longer possible. Customers can
define what package sizes and what flavors they want
to run, and in a variety of package formats. "For us, it's
really bag size range and format that's the criteria," Mr.
Long explained. "Customers want flexibility in machinery design for whatever they want to run."
Today's technology allows KW to produce equipment that can package up to 160 BPM.
The key, he said, is to listen carefully to customers
and understand the industry trends driving their business and then find ways to respond.
"KW doesn't have a singular focus on the domestic
US market," Mr. Long added. "We are proudly an American company, and we make our machinery here in
Georgia, but we've been exporting snack-food packaging machinery around the world since the early 1960s."
As a result, KW snack-food machinery is in about
86 countries.
26

Snack World

November 2014

www.sfa.org

"From that standpoint, it helps us to provide
some perspective to our customers about what's
going on in the snack industry in other countries,"
he said. "Our customers appreciate the fact that we
share ideas through a broad market area and that
we can share best practices without trading on
proprietary information."
With the fastest snack industry growth rates coming
from developing international markets that cannot
handle highly complex equipment with the fastest
production speeds, KW has developed machines specifically designed for those customers.
"Our latest offering is the Frontier bagmaker, introduced at PackExpo in November. It is exciting for us,"
Mr. Long said, "because it is designed in two models,
one for snack foods and the other for crackers, cereals and confections which don't require specialized
snack features. It is designed to be simple to operate,
simple to maintain and cost-effective for developing
markets." Recently introduced are the new P-3 and G-3
bagmakers, each in two versions: continuous motion
and intermittent motion.
More innovation is ahead. "We are doing some
investigation and work on ultrasonic rather than heat
sealing of packages," Mr. Long said.
KW's branding message is that it produces "packaging machinery with a custom(er) attitude."
"What we try to do is listen carefully to our customers, share experience in their industry and develop
products and services attuned to those needs," he said.
"We keep a narrow focus and are not distracted by the
next shiny thing that comes down the street."
*

http://www.sfa.org

Snack World - November 2014

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of Snack World - November 2014