Baking & Snack - September 2015 - 119

EQUIPMENT
Vertical Packaging

Up, Up and Away
Vertical form/fill/seal machines reflect the need for speed
across the baking and snack industries.
by Lynn Petrak

As consumers enjoy more prepackaged snacks and bakery
products - 94% of all Americans snack at least once a day
and more than half of adults snack two to three times a day,
according to a recent study from the market research firm
Mintel - manufacturers continually seek ways to keep up
with today's snacking society.
To meet demand, bakeries and snack food companies
are producing more and different types of products and,
at the same time, are looking for greater equipment efficiency, including vertical form/fill/seal (f/f/s) machines,
and speed ranks high among manufacturers' priorities for
vertical f/f/s systems.
"In the snack food, bakery and confection markets, so
many things are going on in bagging that affect speed," said
Mark Lozano, sales manager, North America, TNA North
America, a global supplier of integrated food packaging
and processing solutions with US offices in Coppell, TX.
Speed is even more top-of-mind among those who produce single-serve and smaller-portion packs and who want
to do more with less. "Baking and snack customers are
trying to maximize output per square foot. We have seen
growing interest in high-speed applications related to small
single-serve packages," noted Paul Garms, product and
marketing manager at Bosch Packaging Technology, New
Richmond, WI.
Mr. Lozano, too, said that single and smaller-serving
packages are changing the game when it comes to
throughput and speed for vertical f/f/s systems. "There
has been a shift to smaller-portion bags, and that has impacted speed. You don't change what comes out of your
ovens in terms of the product - you need to be able to
package those products into more bags in a single location. You're getting more bags out and need to keep up
with the volume," he explained.
Volume is decidedly increasing, according to Mr.
Lozano. "Originally, we said we could do 80 bags a minute,
and people were like, 'Really?' Now, we can run at least 135
bags per minute for smaller packs," he explained.

TNA recently worked with a cookie company to ramp
up production of 100-Cal single-serve cookie packages.
"We partnered with them to do 194 bags a minute in a
single tube," Mr. Lozano said, adding that TNA has also
worked with gummy candy manufacturer to produce bags
at speeds of 180 to 220 per minute. TNA isn't just keeping
pace, either. "We're aiming even higher," he declared.
Other vertical f/f/s speeds vary based on machine, material, product and system design. At Bosch, Mr. Garms
reported vertical f/f/s baggers can run up to 200 cycles a
minute for a single-tube bagger.
Hayward, CA-based Heat & Control, Inc., offers several different solutions for high-speed snack packaging,
including a bag maker and dual-snack packaging system
composed of two bag makers direct-mounted to a double
weigher. Brian Barr, sales manager for packaging systems,
agreed the numbers are moving up. "Ishida's Atlas 123C
continuous motion bagmaker produces up to 250 pillow
bags per minute, depending on product and bag size," he
said, noting that the system is also designed around ver-

As demand for single-serve
snacks and baked foods
increases, bakers and snack
makers are requiring high-speed
applications in vertical packaging.
Bosch Packaging Technology

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