Formed 29-years ago by Philip Carter and Philip Wong, though still considered a small boutique agency, Carter Wong boasts many big brands and iconic identities in its creative gallery, including: the FIA Formula 1 logo, the Heartmarque for Unilever’s global ice cream business, and Lowe Worldwide’s corporate identity.

In fact, its relationship with Unilever played a hand in its ability to rebrand the globally-recognized Cornetto brand that was created some 50-years ago. For Carter Wong, the plan was to shake off the brand’s staid roots as a seasonal, out-of-home treat and rebrand it as a product that can be enjoyed at home and at any time of the year.

The rebrand gives the product a more youthful appeal, aimed at a 14-25 year old market. The visual changes signal and support a range of innovations in the product and product range that will reposition the brand worldwide.

The new brand design addresses key issues related to the global reach of the brand. It takes into account language differences, the variable printing capabilities of countries, and most importantly brand recognition. While not rigidly uniform, the new look signals that wherever you are in the world, the Cornetto range is part of a single family.

The message across the globe is that the new-style Cornetto provides a full on journey of tastes and textures from crown to tip, with six deeper flutes on the crown and the all-important chocolate tip at the end.

A slightly suggestive strap-line, ‘Enjoy the ride, love the ending’ aimed at a more youthful audience supports much of the design.

New color coding of the Classic single cone and multi-cone packaging give a visual indication of the flavors, drawing on familiar universal conventions: blue for Classic Vanilla, red for Strawberry, brown for Chocolate, green for Mint, etc.

The colors are linked to precise pantone references to achieve consistency in every market despite local production.

Classic multi-packs have also been given a make-over. Again, these are color-coded, with appetizing images of the cones, ingredients offset against a swirl background.

The cones within the multi-packs are given a completely different graphic design based on lively, modern typography intended to discourage the sale of the cones as individual units.

Some regional differences have been introduced, without undermining the ‘family’ look, to reflect local market tastes.

Corneto Enigma cones have a clear lid to tempt the consumer with its sophisticated flavor options.

The re-design is carried across the premium Enigma range of ice creams, which signals their different recipes with the aid of clear perspex coned lids that reveal an enticing peak of ice cream at the top and chocolate swirl patterns interwoven with their flavor color coding.

As part of the range review, innovative Mix-Mini packs have been introduced to encourage the concept of sharing, in response to the tendency for the 14-25 age group to snack while they are involved in largely technology-based group activities.

Carter Wong also redesigned the Cornetto Mix packages.

To appeal to the younger target audience, Carter Wong has created a library of quirky illustrations that add a sense of fun and bring to life important messaging.

These mood icons include playful characters, thought bubbles, love hearts and arrows, as well as references to universal youth culture: surfer vans, a play on the classic “I ♥ NY logo” creating the hopefully soon to be iconic ‘ I ♥ ▼’,  and a couple on an Italian Vespa scooter, for instance. Similarly, a bespoke hand-drawn font in all languages has also been designed as part of the new design collateral.

To support the new branding and packaging, Carter Wong has created guidelines for point-of-sale collateral to inspire local design and sales teams the world over. These are encouraged to take their own initiatives in their markets and convey the spirit rather than the letter of the branding through their marketing collateral. They can also choose or draw inspiration from a menu of ready designed elements, which include fun cone-shaped A-boards (see image below), youthful wind-surf style banners, eye-catching waste-paper bins and freezer décor, and more.

Global vice-president Ice Cream Cornetto & Kids, Alberto Di Leo says: “Carter Wong always employ a great deal of craftsmanship and art in what they do which is at the very heart of Unilever’s marketing strategy, ‘Crafting Brands for Life.’ With the new Cornetto logo they have created something truly magical and unique.”

Founder and creative director Phil Carter sums up: “Second only to the Unilever Heartmarque, the Cornetto is probably the most recognizable ice-cream brand across the world. The commission to redesign and reposition it has been a privilege. Our intimate knowledge of Unilever’s ice cream business and its global/local position gave us invaluable insights into how best to progress the Cornetto re-brand and create something memorable.”

Flint Packaging had a challenge. As far as problems go, it was the good kind, but it was still a situation that was less than optimal.

Based in Vaughan, Ontario, Flint Packaging takes corrugated cardboard and turns those sheets into custom-made boxes for clients in a wide variety of industries. And while it may not seem that boxes are items that would need to be available in rush or on-demand order situations, they are.

“We would be looking at approximately 20 clients who carry a large amount of inventory on our floor at any given time. It generally turns within 30 days. It’s available for the customer 24 hours a day seven days a week,” says Flint sales manager Don Archibald.

“I do have some customers for which I must keep something on the floor otherwise they could be in a spot where their lines might go down. And we’re willing to do that. I just needed to be able to do it under one roof,” adds Flint vice-president Karina (Kari) Mattila.

The “under one roof” requirement presented difficulties. The company, which has sales of $10 million annually and a workforce of 43 employees, found itself out of warehouse room in its own building, so it was forced to rent space in nearby facilities.

Aside from the hassles involved in handling and managing materials stored in multiple locations, off-site storage meant increased costs, a situation that made no financial sense and required a solution.

“We were leasing warehouse space. At one point it was 20,000sqf. Then we had it down to 10,000sqf. The idea was to remove it all together,” says Mattila. “I was tasked with the requirement of no more leased space. If we wanted to warehouse our inventory items, it would need to be done here and I needed a solution for it.”

Mattila decided the only solution was to make more efficient use of Flint’s existing space, so she began looking for storage solutions that would turn dead, unused space into storage areas. While much facility’s floor space is taken up with manufacturing equipment—machinery that cuts, shapes, glues and bundles the boxes—the space above the equipment was empty.

To see MM&D video of Flint’s mobile pallet racks click here.

“If you stand back and look at the plant you see dead space above everything. We’ve seen enough Ikea commercials to know that empty space isn’t good,” says Mattila.

“You can always utilize ‘up’ in the plant. Just because you only have 65,000sqf of floor space, if you can utilize what is up above, you can basically double your plant floor space under the right conditions,” says Archibald.

Originally Mattila thought installing a narrow-aisle mezzanine or storage platform would be the answer to Flint’s warehousing problem, so she began searching online for vendors that could give Flint a usable second floor. As part of that process, she came across the website for SSI-Schaefer where she saw mention of the company’s mobile pallet racking.

“One of the case studies had a tractor trailer bed with huge roles of paper, similar to what our corrugated sheet suppliers may use. So if they were capable of building racking or storage solutions for big rolls of paper like that I thought certainly they know what they are doing and they’d be able to help me find a way to store some skids of corrugated.”

What Mattila didn’t know at the time, however, was that while mobile pallet racks were popular in Europe, SSI-Schaefer had never built and installed one in an already existing facility in Canada.

At the initial meeting between the Flint team and Bob Trojnar, sales manager for the materials handling division of the Brampton, Ontario-based Canadian division of SSI-Schaefer, a number of solutions were discussed, including storage platforms. However, it wasn’t until Mattila brought up the possibility of mobile pallet racking that Flint’s storage solution began to take shape. Even then, it wasn’t as simple as placing an order for some stock racking. Because every mobile pallet racking system is custom-designed,  Trojnar first had to understand just what Flint needed and how the system would be used.

“I had to learn about the capacities and the weight of cardboard,” says Trojnar. “I spent a fair amount of time in their manufacturing facility, learning their production—their runs, how big they are. I really learned a lot about the corrugated cardboard manufacturing process because I had to. I had to understand if this was going to work because to propose a system and make sure it is going to work you need to do your due diligence and learn about what they do. That was a challenge too. It was something totally new. I would expect to go to a distribution centre with that kind of system, not to a cardboard manufacturing facility. To us it was all new.”

For example, Trojnar originally proposed a system that was three bays high, but after some research and consultation with Flint, it was determined the cardboard was light enough—a 102cm (40in) by 122cm (48in) skid weighs approximately 272kg (600lb) unless it is tightly fluted and therefore much heavier—that the system could support a four-bay high configuration.

Not only did Trojnar and SSI-Schaefer need to figure out a system that would work for Flint, they also had to find a partner to help provide components for the system. In the end it incorporated carriages from Spacesaver Solutions Inc into the racking.

Before the shelving could be put up, the plant floor had to be prepared. The surface was ground down and epoxied (to ensure it was level) and guidance tracks were cut into the floor. That took three days. Then Trojnar’s team spent four days installing the racking. The power tools used by the installers required Flint to temporarily install heavy duty power feeds, but the racking itself has a much lighter energy demand.

“The system is driven by the motors. These are very, very low voltage 88-volt motors. Each bay has its own motor. And it’s driven by the chain drive. It’s unique, but it’s a pretty simple drive system. The whole system operates on 110-volts. It doesn’t use much power. Because you have those 88-volt motors, they have very low power consumption. Your stove in the house consumes more than that whole system,” says Trojnar.

The system has two stationary racks at each end and three movable units of bays. The bays on both the fixed and the mobile racks run three long and four high. The racks are designed so more products can be stored in a smaller space than traditional stationary racks would use.

In their tightest configuration, the three mobile racks move toward one of the stationary racks. They come to a rest tightly spaced together—much like the closed accordion bellows—allowing no access to most of the products they store.

The only way to reach the pallets on the shelves is via the space between the last of the mobile racks and the stationary rack on the far end. That distance is a standard aisle. When access to the inner bays is needed, the mobile racks separate and slide into a position that creates an empty aisle in front of the required bay.

SSI-Schaefer’s mobile pallet racks come with a number of safety features to ensure foreign objects cannot be crushed or trapped between the racks as they move together. In addition to the AC power, they can, in emergency or power outage situations, be  run off a portable battery.

“The backup battery is in a little briefcase. In case we get a significant power outage then we have to insert a key—it looks like an electronic meat thermometer—and press the button. You have to do it manually because there are no advanced safety features when it’s running from backup battery power. In lieu of the advanced safety features, they insert the human element, which is you have to be standing there physically holding it order to make it go,” says Mattila.

While operating under normal conditions, the rack movement can be activated in one of two ways. The operator can push a button on the rack control panel, or drivers operating one of Flint’s five tow motors or the lone reach truck, can push a button on their vehicles and trigger the movement remotely. The racks move at a speed of one metre per minute.

When the plant is closed, the racks move into a night-park position, says Archibald. “All of the racks will separate to a certain extent. They will spread across the whole area. That’s in case of a fire, to allow the sprinklers to do their work better.”

The area covered by the racks formerly held stacked corrugated sheets and boxes. While there is still a small area where the cardboard is sitting on the floor and not on shelves, the mobile pallet racking takes up most of the available storage space.

“The racks are roughly 31ft by 54ft. They hold 240 to 360 skids, depending on whether we get two or three to a bunk. The comparable space need for non-mobile racking would be 31ft x 106ft (including room for aisles) and we would only get 180 maximum because we would only be able to go three high” says Archibald.

So far Flint Packaging is very pleased with how the racks are working. The company gave up its extra leased warehouse space in August 2012—as soon as the racks were installed—which means the racks, which cost Flint in the low six figures, are well on their way to paying for themselves. According to Mattila’s calculations based on the cost of rental space the racks will take her either eight months to pay off (assuming they are taking the place of a 20,000sqf lease) or just over 14 months (assuming a 10,000sqf lease).

Not only are the racks a financial success, they are also helping to make Flint’s operations more organized, says Archibald.

“It has given us a visual flag to improve our efficiencies. We have a unique date-coding system. If everything was stacked up on the floor, we wouldn’t be able to see the little tags and see when things were manufactured, especially if we had a quality issue with the customer. So the visibility of it is really good. It has just worked.”

Even though they’ve only been in place for a few months, the mobile pallet racks have already caused the Flint team to start speculating about future applications.

“I want another set of racks out there, another row of them. Honestly I can see us having three more areas of mobile pallet racking,” says Archibald. “I think mobile pallet racking on its own can expand our floor space utilization by 60 percent. I don’t think that’s out of the question. You’re adding an extra layer. You’re getting rid of all the aisles. If you stick in more mobile pallet racking, it almost compounds the usage area.

Mattila agrees with the desire to buy more equipment. “I know I want at least one more for sure.”

As much as they’re enamoured of the racks, Archibald says he can see the next set being slightly different from the original installation.

“We’ve learned a few things we’ll probably change a little bit for the next one. We’d change the rack length. There is a lot of wasted space in there right now. Instead of 120in long, maybe we cut down to 105in or 106in, but we’d have to talk about that.”

As to when the company will be ready to install another system, that’s still up in the air.

“I don’t have any projected dates for that,” says Mattila. “Now that I know it exists, as soon as I’m in a spot when I have enough going through my plant to require the rental of storage trailers—or the space on my floor is taken up and my volume goes so high I don’t have room to move due to incoming and outgoing material—I’ll do it then. Just as soon as it hits that point, because I will not go and lease space. No. There’s no need. I know this is in our toolkit, in our arsenal now. I won’t get caught back up in that again.”

Not that Flint has any plans to relocate in the future, but the fact the racks are portable is just one more reason they appeal to Archibald.

“One of the beauties of it is if we ever decide to move, you can pick it up and take it with you, whereas a mezzanine is a sunk cost that stays with the building.”

Archibald also noted that because the racks were just pieces of equipment, and not considered to be structural changes to the building as a mezzanine would be, there were no building permits required.

The mobile pallet racks do represent a significant investment for Flint, so Mattila is determined they will be well cared for. The tracks are swept out or vacuumed on a regular basis to remove any stray bits of wooden pallets or cardboard fibres. She says the company even purchased equipment specifically to use in conjunction with the racking.

“The forks on our other trucks were too long and we didn’t want to have to retrofit something. I wanted to be able to go with something as small in the aisle as possible, and we had somebody here who had the skill set and was quite good at using reach, so we bought a reach truck. Is it possible to get the tow motor in? Yes, it’s a little bit of a dance if you put the shorter forks on it, but again, it’s an investment. I don’t want to ding the racks. I would rather use the reach. It’s easier to turn.”

So far, maintenance on the racks has been easy. Because they are so new, they haven’t required any attention. Eventually Trojnar expects to see Flint’s racks on a six month inspection schedule. At that time the chains will likely be greased, just to prevent wear and tear, but he says that will probably be the extent of any servicing.

While Flint’s racks maybe the first of their kind in the country, so far that hasn’t proven to be an issue. In fact, their newness has even led to some of Flint’s customers asking for demonstrations. Mattila says she enjoys obliging their requests, as it gives her a opportunity to connect with people and talk to them outside of a sales meeting environment. Besides, she loves talking about the technology and the project.

“It’s awesome to be first.”

Racking meets barcoding

As is evidenced by Flint’s quick adoption of the mobile pallet racking, company executives aren’t intimidated by technology, especially when it makes sense.

Now that the storage problem has been solved, Mattila and Archibald are ready to turn their attention to the next piece of technology that can add efficiencies to Flint’s processes: barcodes.

“I would love to see us have each bunk space barcoded and as a skid gets put into the rack it would be scanned in and scanned out of that position,” says Archibald.

According to Mattila, Flint already has some barcoding capabilities, but they’re being underutilized, in part because the corrugated box software that runs Flint’s equipment and acts as its ERP system didn’t have the ability to incorporate barcode information. At least it didn’t until very recently.

“I’ve checked into it, I’ve pushed the limits of our existing software provider’s development team and it’s definitely do-able. The capability exists. It did not a year ago, but I’ve quietly pushed for what I need.”

She envisions a system where every operator has a tablet on the tow motor and the ability to scan items directly to the tablet and feed the information into the main software system.

“They could have a list and every slot could have its own unique location ID. They’d be able to scan the load tag for every skid into a slot. So if the girls upstairs want to know where something is, they would know we’ve got 2,000 pieces of that item—500 in each of four slots, and know which slot numbers.”

While Flint has no specific plans to roll out a big barcoding project, that doesn’t mean it won’t happen.

“If it makes sense it’s really hard to keep me away from it,” says Mattila. “Water wears down the stone.”

Photos by Stephen Uhraney

A mere 10 years ago, world consumption of bottled water stood at 100 billion liters, but since then—and despite the global economic downturn—volumes have actually doubled.

Perhaps even more amazing is that, according to the latest calculations by industry research analysts, Canadean, packaged water will actually overtake carbonates as the leading soft drinks category in just two years—2015.

This anticipated result is being bolstered by water’s healthy image, a fact always known, but only recently heeded. As well, water is still a pertinent necessity in many global areas lacking safe water supplies.

The main thrust behind this category re-positioning is coming from Asia, where volumes are predicted to rise by around 16 per cent in 2013 alone—more than twice the global rate of increase.

In Asia, it absorbs one in every three liters of packaged water consumed around the world, and yet its per capita intake still remains well-below the international average, in areas like Pakistan, the Philippines and Vietnam where it is still less than 10 liters per capita.

Because of this, Canadean says there is still a huge market potential for growth of packaged water still to be realized.

Asian growth has a strong dependency on China where major suppliers like the Blue Sword Group, China Resources Enterprises, Coca-Cola and Zhejiang Nongfushanquan Water Co are helping to drive expansion.

However, though the Chinese market is large, it is also fragmented.

Despite a combined volume in the order of seven billion liters, these four players are responsible for less than one-third of category sales.

Even more telling, according to Canadean, while China represents the cornerstone of Asian packaged water consumption, it says that India has shown more growth, at well over 20 per cent a year.

The North American packaged water market is also huge, with current sales in excess of 30 billion liters, but the pace of development is far less vibrant than in Asia.

Canadean says that consumption volumes of bottled water suffered in North America during the recent recession, and has been slow to recover, though it’s annual growth rate shows signs of accelerating.

Recent progress has been driven partly by packaged water’s improved value offering, with consumers switching from other beverages where prices have risen more steeply.

At the same time, the category has benefited from its intrinsic low calorie proposition relative to alternative mainstream soft drinks.

However, conditions remain very challenging as a combination of relatively low growth and wafer thin profit margins make it hard for suppliers to commit to long-term investment in brand support – but Canadean says this is not a deterrent to future volume growth.

What is most reassuring for packaged water is that Canadean sees a positive future across all regions, even in West Europe where demand was struggling to increase even before the start of the economic crisis.

Canadean says that the overall outlook in western Europe has been negatively affected by category maturity in Germany. and the threat posed by competing water filters and local authority initiatives promoting tap water in Italy.

Nevertheless, market positivity is slowly returning, with almost 900 million liters predicted to join the regional pool by 2018.

For more information on Canadean, visit www.canadean.com.

Because jugs are a notoriously difficult product to pack as they are heavy to lift and require an accurate loading process, Eagle Packaging made a few adjustments to its BOXXER, that will provide, according to the machine manufacturer, significant value to the market place.

Once the jugs are filled and capped, they enter the BOXXER through an in-feed conveyor and are stacked according to the pack pattern that has been chosen by the operator.

According to Eagle Packaging, when presented the project by a customer, they noted that the particular project required two separate pack patterns: packing four one-gallon round jugs into a case, and two 2.5-gallon square jugs into another case.

As well, while the jugs are being arranged, a knock-down case is being pulled from a hopper and formed.

While other machines of a similar ilk typically use a drop packer that drops the jugs from the top of the box—providing the potential for damage to the containers and risking liquid spillage—Eagle Packaging designed its BOXXER to gently lift the product from the bottom.

Utilizing a servo-driven mechanism, this system is able to lift the heavy weight while reducing the risk of spillage which is a concern with this type of product. Once the case is packed, it is then conveyed to the sealing station for tape or glue depending on the application.

The BOXXER’s method of packing both round and square jugs eliminates the risk of spills, is precise, as well as increases the overall production rates.

For more information, visit www.eaglepm.com or call 305-622-4070.

Anthem Worldwide identified 10 consumer and shopper trends and counter-trends and fielded a study to get a pulse on these sentiments in the U.S., U.K. and China. One of these, Youthfulness vs. Older and Wiser, related to who consumers are.

Consumers were asked which they believed would be more prominent in 2013: “a youthful spirit” or “an older, wiser soul.” The study conducted by Ipsos from December 17 to 25, 2012, included an international sample of 1,500 people (500 from the U.S., U.K., and China, respectively) from Ipsos’ online panel.

The results of the study support the conclusion that in aggregate, across all three countries, more than half of respondents, 59 percent, believe that Older and Wiser will be a more prominent trend than Youthfulness in 2013.

While U.S. consumers were split more evenly between ‘Older and Wiser’ and ‘Youthfulness’ (49 percent versu 51 percent, respectively), consumers in the U.K. and China weighted the results more towards ‘Older and Wiser’. Sixty-two percent of U.K. consumers and 66 percent of Chinese consumers believed that ‘an older, wiser soul’ would be a more prominent sentiment.

Anthem Worldwide vice-president of brand strategy Kathy Oneto says, “In China, this is likely due to the deep-rooted family tradition of having respect for one’s elders, along with the forecasted fast rate of growth of its elderly population given the country’s one-child policy and improved life expectancy. In the U.K., the high unemployment rate of youth, at about 20 percent, and older people staying and having more presence in the workforce longer may be influencing this sentiment.

“Boomers around the globe still have great influence,” adds Oneto. “Older age isn’t what it once was, especially for women who find their next act and really come into their own in this stage of life. Vibrancy and energy are still critical and possible with people in this age group not weighed down by expectations and judgment. The lightheartedness that supposedly is present in youth is actually practiced at an older age, with boomers having more presence to shrug off the unimportant.”

Oneto sums up: “While not considered to be as prominent, youthfulness will still be in force to some degree, as the youth movement has been impacting elections, creating movements, and stopping businesses over the last couple of years. And while youth around the globe are more challenged and stressed than in generations past, they are also more entrepreneurial and motivated to make a difference in the world. The youthful spirit shouldn’t be underestimated; in truth, we all want a piece of it.”

For more in-depth data, click HERE to read more and access, “Anthem Sightings, Vol.4, 2012: The Forecast Issue.”

Below is a video of Oneto participating in a recent BrandSquare Live Webinar: “Inflection Point: Where Will 2013 Take Us?”

Seeking a new external look for its internal body cleanse products, Radiance Cleanse turned to London, UK-based design and branding agency Construct London Limited, who created the brand identity, logotype, packaging, website and art direction for ‘juice cleansing’ company.

Key to the overall look of the bottles, is its clean, uncluttered look, mimicking the work of the cleansing juice.

While there is some debate as to the practical health benefits of such cleansings, Radiance Cleanse suggests that by imbibing a one-, three- or five-day treatment course of its 100 percent organic and cold-pressed raw juices, it will help the consumer detox the body, energize the body and help maintain the body’s weight naturally.

As part of the program, Construct London has numbered the bottles – on the caps – to help the detoxer along the way to hopefully cleaner and more healthy insides.

Now available across the U.K., Radiance Cleanse was founded in 2009 by Christina Agnew and Clare Neill who believe in the benefits of juice cleansing and have now pioneered the U.K.’s first high quality, nutritional and organic juice cleanse program.

For more information on Construct, visit www.constructlondon.com.

Which in retrospect seems only inevitable—thanks to the product’s inherent and virtually unrivaled ability to combine an inexpensive, delicious and nutritious taste experience in small, single-serve plastic cups that provide a delicious ‘good-for-you’ snack or meal-time option both at home and on-the-go.

And while yogurt has been on mankind’s menu in one form or another for an estimated 4,500 years, its long-awaited embrace by western consumer societies as a highly functional and super-healthy product is a fairly recent development.

But better late than never.

A Markem-Imaje 7031 HD laser coder safely marks the tops of 24 yogurt lids in less than one second on the Erca filling line.

Loaded with the so-called ‘good bacteria’ required for maintaining a healthy digestive tract, modern-day yogurt is truly a unique dairy staple that packs a formidable mix of the much-needed proteins, calcium, vitamins B-2 and B-12, potassium and magnesium that are considered to be essential ingredients for maintaining a healthy body and appearance.

In fact, some yogurt aficionados have been known to apply it to their skin to achieve smoother texture, as well using it as polish for candlesticks.

So all in all, it’s fair to say that there has never been a better time to be in the yogurt business for the St. Hubert, Que.-headquartered Liberté Brand Products Co. than now.

Founded in 1936, the company manufactures a broad range of delicious all-natural, organic and specialty dairy products—specializing in the many varieties and flavors of yogurt created in an artisan-like fashion.

The CPS 50 complete robotic packaging station built by Automation Robotic Packaging automatically moves multipacks of yogurt products onto the paperboard sleeve assembly unit.

Operating distribution centers in St. Hubert, Brampton, Ont., and Richmond, B.C., as well as two large production facilities in Toronto and St. Hyacinthe, Que., the company is also a highly-reputed producer of cream cheese and cottage cheese originally developed specifically to serve the dietary needs of the large Jewish community in the Montreal area, according to Normand Champagne, plant manager of the 120,000-square-foot, 160-employee St. Hyacinthe facility.

“Liberté was formed by a family of Russian Jews fleeing persecution at home who first arrived New York City, where they were deeply inspired by the majesty of the Statue of Liberty,” Champagne told Canadian Packaging in a recent interview.

“So after moving to Canada to start their dairy business, producing cream cheese and cottage cheese, they named it after the iconic statue of freedom.”

A Markem-Imaje 7031 HD laser coder adds permanent coding by removing a layer of ink from the sealed surface to apply best-before dates and time of packaging information.

After gaining a solid reputation and renown as a top-notch traditional and artisan manufacturer of dairy products, the company eventually relocated to a bigger premises in Brossard, Que., continuing to produce its popular cream cheese but also adding yogurt to the menu, Champagne relates.

And while the company still strictly adheres to its original artisan roots and traditional craftsmanship stressing product quality and purity above all else, the sheer volume of yogurt it produces and markets nowadays is quite simply breathtaking—driven by the phenomenal market success achieved in recent years by its popular Méditerranée and Greek yogurt brands.

“Our St. Hyacinthe plant produces over one-million kilograms of yogurt every week,” states Champagne.

“In fact, we are a national leader in the production and sale of Greek-style yogurts made at our HACCP (Hazard Analysis Critical Control Points)-certified St. Hyacinthe plant,” which was originally a 30,000-square-foot facility acquired by Liberté in its 2008 acquisition of the Kooll Desserts company.

“Having the production facility in such an important food-industry city like St. Hyacinthe is very important, as we were able to vastly expand our business potential,” says Champagne, explaining the quadrupling of the plant’s original size in just four years.

“Because Liberté had a sound plan in place, we were able to make substantial capital investments in the facility while expanding and upgrading it to its current size,” Champagne explains.

A Markem-Imaje 2200 print-and-apply labeler quickly attaching a thermal-transfer label containing product identification and lot code data onto the corrugated trays filled with multipacks of yogurt cups.

Naturally, the company’s impressive growth and potential has attracted a number of deep-pocketed suitors over the years, with French-headquartered dairy powerhouse Yoplait acquiring it in 2010 and, a few months later, the international division of General Mills taking over ownership in January of 2011.

Despite the impressive recent upgrades to the facility size, and technologies and strategic importance, Liberté firmly remains in no rush to alter its hard-earned artisan image, asserts Champagne, citing the company’s strong community roots and CRS (corporate social responsibility) credentials displayed by the company’s ongoing support for further development of organic products and farms, implementing more sustainable work methods, and participating in many local-level community ‘green’ projects and programs.

But above all that, the people who work at Liberté still consider themselves to be artisans producing high-quality artisan products,” explains Champagne, pointing out that unlike most of the competing mass-produced yogurt products in the marketplace, Liberté’s yogurts do not contain any starches or thickening agents—letting the products’ all-natural composition and appearance to speak for itself.

Says Champagne: “We are very proud to have made our place of business less about solely being a factory, but more about creating a business with a real purpose to it.”

Freshly-filled plastic tubs of Liberté Sour Cream on FlexLink conveyors heading towards the Markem-Imaje 9232 small-character inkjet coder for best-before and lot-coded data application onto the lidding.

According to Champagne, that purpose is now exceptionally well-served on a daily basis with the plant’s brand new Erca filling line used to produce multipack single-serve yogurt in a swift, operator-friendly process, whereby the Erca form/fill/seal machine quickly heats a plastic sheet, forms it into a plastic cup shape base, cools the plastic, and then fills it four at a time with up to four different flavors of fruit-in-bottom or stirred-fruit yogurt varieties.

“After filling the individual cups, the Erca adds lidding, applies wallpapers (wraparound brand graphics) and heat-seals it,” Champagne explains.

A trio of Schneider Electric’s Elau Packaging Solutions SH-055 AC servomotors used to power the ARP robotic packaging station.

After the lidding is done, the packs are swiftly conveyed for lot-code and best-before date application now handled by the plant’s brand new, state-of-the-art laser coding system.

Manufactured by Markem-Imaje, the 7031 HD (high-definition) laser coder is able to mark the tops of 24 yogurt cups per cycle at such a high rate of coding speed, it enables Liberté to reduce its operating expenses—Markem-Imaje told Liberté that in order to perform the same job, six standard continuous inkjet coders would be required.

Robust SEW-Eurodrive AC motors and precision Festo pneumatics enable the ARP robotic packaging station to form corrugated trays for multipacks of yogurt at high speeds.

“We also save on production line downtime because, as with all laser systems, no time is spent adding inks to the machine,” says Champagne.

According to Markem-Imaje national sales manager Tony Stryker, “The laser system actually removes a layer of ink from the top surface of the seal without compromising the product seal while adding 24 codes to the yogurt packs in less than one second.”

For Liberté, the Markem-Imaje 7031 HD can print over a large area: up to 16×16-inches with a single head. With a higher energy output and smaller footprint than other competing laser coders on the market, the 7031 HD is easily integrated while using less power which helps extend the life of the laser head to over 30,000 hours of operating time.

Liberté has long been familiar with the excellent marking qualities of Markem-Imaje equipment, having first purchased multiple continuous inkjet coders from the equipment manufacturer seven years previous.

And when Liberté was looking for an additional solution, it was just icing on the cake for Champagne when he discovered that parent-company Yoplait also had a very strong global partnership with Markem-Imaje.

After the filling and coding, the yogurt multipacks travel through a Safeline industrial metal detection system manufactured by Mettler-Toledo International Inc. before moving through a custom-manufactured CPS 50 compact robotic packaging station designed and built by the French-based Automation Robotic Packaging (ARP).

Key performance features of the CPS 50 robotic packaging station include: quick format changeover; easy accessibility and superior ergonomics for operators; robust stainless-steel construction; high-performance components and parts for reduced and simplified maintenance.

The CPS 50 robotic packaging station uses high-performance servomotors, manufactured by Schneider Electric’s Elau Packaging Solutions business, for optimal power distribution and efficiency.

Some of the important components utilized within the ARP includes:

• a 
Schneider Electric’s Magelis touchscreen operator panel,

• 
servo motors from Schneider’s Elau Packaging Solutions;

• 
a conveyor system designed and manufactured by FlexLink that guides materials through each stage of the station;

• 
AC motors manufactured by SEW-Eurodrive and Festo pneumatics providing power to the conveyor.

The easy-to-operate ARP is able to pick up multipacks of four, six, eight, 12 or 16, rotate it 90-degrees and place it atop a paperboard blank provided by St. Hyacinthe’s Groupe Ecco. The paperboard blank has a jet of hot glue supplied by Technical Adhesives applied via a Nordson ProBlue7 adhesive application system as the paperboard is folded around the yogurt pack to form a sleeve.

The ARP then picks up the sleeved yogurt pack, rotates it another 90 degrees and places it atop a larger corrugated tray blank made by Norampac, a division of Cascades. After enough sleeved packs are placed onto the corrugated blank, the ARP folds the blank forming a tray at a high rate of speed before stacking it.

A small-character Markem-Imaje inkjet coder is used to apply best-before and lot code data onto the lids of Liberté’s organic, fat-free yogurts.

Contained within the ARP, a Markem-Imaje 2200 print-and-apply labeler creates a white adhesive thermal transfer containing manufacturing date, expiry date and product barcode data and quickly applies the label to a sidewall of the newly formed trays.

According to Stryker, the 2200 can print and apply labels at rates of up to 125 packs per minute, adding it is designed to offer flexibility as a single standard printer but with many label applicator options such as side-, top-, front-, front and side-, corner wrap and more.

While containing robust components, Stryker says that for parts that typically see more wear during prolonged operation—like the print head and roller—it can be easily replaced without the use of tools, ensuring minimal downtime. As well, to avoid unnecessary production stoppages, the 2200 is designed to match both label stock and ribbon at 560 meters to assure both are replenished at the same time.

“Label images can be stored on the printer and downloaded via USB or Ethernet connection,” continues Stryker. “Labels can also be stored on a server and sent to the printer at the time of production.”

Another recent purchase for Liberté, is a Markem-Imaje CoLOS Create Pro software tool that provides the yogurt manufacturer with the ability to create label images including text, bar codes, logos, time and date fields, counters, automatic date offsets and more. Although available separately, this tool is part of the CoLOS Enterprise network version that allows for two-way communication with an unlimited number of printers.

“Every printer on a factory floor can be connected to a single computer where all of the printer data is stored and maintained centrally,” explains Stryker adding that CoLOS Enterprise provides real-time printer status information alerting the operator if a printer is getting low on supplies or has a fault condition.

Other Markem-Imaje inkjet coding equipment at the Liberté St. Hyacinthe facility includes two Model 9232’s, three Model 9020/9030’s, one 9040, and five additional model 2200 print-and-apply machines.

“The dairy industry—and the yogurt industry especially—is a very competitive segment within the food-processing sector,” explains Champagne. “It is important for us to be considered a leader within the yogurt-manufacturing industry, and not to be satisfied in merely following others.

“Liberté is aware that the Greek and Mediterranean yogurts are currently a hot commodity for consumers, and we have to keep our competitive edge through constant innovation,” sums up Champagne, “and that includes the way we operate our production line.

“We are always looking for great new equipment, like the Markem-Imaje 7031 HD laser coder and the ARP and Erca equipment, to give us a competitive edge to help us maintain our leadership in the yogurt processing market well into the future.”

In recent years, the discipline of shopper marketing has become a hot topic in marketing circles around the world. One important component of a brand’s shopper marketing program is its packaging strategy. That’s right! Packaging is a strategic asset and it should be managed as a valuable component of a brand’s portfolio of assets.

In a recent BrandSpark International study, we found that only one-third of consumers knew exactly which brands they were going to buy on their next visit to the grocery store. While alarming for some, this statistic points to the importance of winning the on-shelf battle.

A products’ packaging is, in most cases, the last opportunity a marketer has to convince the shopper that its product is superior and worth buying compared to the many options stocked right beside it.

Packaging can make a difference in whether a shopper considers your product, buys it and even whether they are willing to pay a premium for it. It is important to note that while products are typically designed for the end user, packaging must be designed with an increased emphasis on the shopper.

What are the keys to success in the on-shelf battle?

For over 10 years we have been testing packaging with consumer packaged goods shoppers through custom studies as well as BrandSpark’s Annual Best New Product Awards program. This global database of insights spans nearly every category and has given us a window into understanding what truly makes packaging a persuasive form of marketing.

While an analysis of our global database reveals many packaging design best practices for each major category, we have identified eight universal truths that are applicable to any CPG (consumer packaged goods) category:

1. Less is more

How many times have you heard this before? It is fascinating today to still see thousands of product packages jam-packed with the entire brand story, all the features, some benefits and more.

This type of feature does not attract shoppers.

In fact, because shoppers are looking to complete their shopping trips as quickly as possible, packaging that is able to communicate the product benefits and the brand’s point of differentiation without having to be picked up will win the sale.

2. Benefits over features

It never fails, every time we test packaging concepts, the ones that highlight the product’s consumer benefit outperforms those that highlight only the features of the product.

As marketers, we sometimes have the tendency to tell consumers and shoppers alike as much as possible about the product.

Let’s face it—most shoppers don’t care.

Tell them how the product will help and benefit them. If you are launching a product under a strong brand with relatively high levels of trust in the category, rest assured that shoppers will believe you have designed a product that will deliver. Just make sure that the product does in fact deliver.

Leverage the back of the package to outline any key features relevant to your differentiated product story, but keep the front clean and clutter-free.

3. Benefit-driven design

The packaging design (shape, color, packaging features) must be able to clearly communicate and emphasize the product and brand benefit.

For example, in laundry care, the main consumer benefits are: remove stains, brightens colors and whitens whites. This would suggest packaging that is clean (free of design and copy clutter), bright (bright vibrant colors, which also ladders up to the benefits of ‘whitens’).

Shoppers recently evaluated the packaging for Schneiders line of Country Naturals, a line of natural meats. The study revealed its strength stemming from its simplicity and ‘natural’ colors – both providing a clear connection to the products benefits. One shopper even when on to explain why the package was so influential to her: “Simple label on package. Not multicolored ‘in-your-face’.”

Ask yourself this, if you were to remove all the copy text from your packaging, what it would communicate? Would the design provide strong cues to the products benefits and points of differentiation?

4. Keep it bright and vibrant

Think of your packaging as a billboard in Times Square. How is it going to stand out in the sea of billboards vying for your attention and dollars?

One of the most common attributes associated with strong persuasive packaging is bright and vibrant coloring. Packaging with bright colors tend to perform better than dull-colored packages, more often than not. This is your products chance to put its best foot forward. Don’t fall flat with dull, boring colors.

Let’s take ice cream for instance; one of the top performing food packages in our database in 2012 is Nestle’s Drumstick Bigger Nugget product. Aside from it being ice cream (indulgent foods tend to score higher on packaging tests), the packaging is successful at persuading shoppers because of its vibrant colors. Not only do the colors make it stand out in the frozen food aisle, but its vibrancy espouses associations of a fun and great-tasting dessert.

One shopper when on to say “I can practically taste it” when asked why the packaging was influential to her.

5. Brand breakthrough

If you were to flash your package in front of shoppers for less than a second, how many would be able to correctly recall your brand?

You must design packages so your brand clearly stands out.

This is especially true if you are launching new products under a brand with strong equity in the market place. Your brand asset needs to be leveraged to its full extent, as you will need all the leverage you can get in this crowded market place.

Imagine your target shopper in the aisle of a store being bombarded by thousands of packages, shelf-talkers, blades, and everything else being thrown at them. Your brand needs to be able to breakthrough the clutter and attract the attention of your target.

6. Attracting your target

This may seem like a ‘no-brainer’, but what a marketer thinks is attractive may not be what the target market thinks is attractive.

Make sure to test packaging with your core target and those of your expanded target before making significant investments in packaging production.

The degree of attractiveness is a strong contributor to a packages performance in the market place.

7. Be transparent

Keep in mind that shoppers operate with a healthy dose of skepticism when they are in the buying mindset.

They don’t easily forget the disappointment of opening a bag of chips only to find out that they are half full.

A glimpse of what is inside the package goes a long way to reassure the shopper that they are getting what they are paying for. Whether it’s a small window or fully transparent package, you are more likely to persuade shoppers to buy your product if you show them what’s inside.

Take Almay Intense I Smoky eye shadow from Revlon for example, one of the top-performing beauty packages. Not only is packaging used as a functional container for the product, but it also acts as a way to showcase to women how the product should be applied. Shoppers can easily see the color combinations and what order they should to be applied. This principle is exemplified by this shopper quote: “It makes it simple to figure out how to apply for those of us who are useless with makeup.”

8. Get points for multi-use packaging

While this is not the primary reason shoppers will buy your product, it definitely will tip the balance in your favor if your packaging can be used long after the product inside has been used.

One last thing: Walk the aisle to keep the shopper mindset

This is not a guideline for packaging design specifically, but such an important aspect of the ongoing process that it needs to be mentioned. Whether you are the brand manager spearheading the launch of a new product or the agency charged with designing breakthrough packaging to sell it, you must take the time to walk the aisles of a grocery store to experience what your target shoppers are experiencing. Take the opportunity to walk through aisles in categories beyond the one(s) you are responsible for to expose yourself to ideas that may be implemented in your own category.

Packages that are able to apply each of these principles will perform better than those that apply only a few.

One of the best performing packages we recently tested is that of Tide Pods. You can easily see that this packaging design applies each of the principles described here.

While these principles may seem straightforward to some, after testing over 400 packages in North America in 2012 alone, we know that these principles are only being applied to some consumer package goods. There is a significant opportunity for brand leaders and their packaging agencies to leverage these persuasive techniques to win the in-store battle for a larger share of shoppers’ wallet.

Mark Baltazar is vice-president and leads the CPG practice at BrandSpark International, a leading brand, marketing and product innovation research company. The company’s comprehensive and innovative research approach learns how consumers think, why they act the way they do, and what its clients need to do about it. BrandSpark International owns and operates the 100% consumer-voted Best New Product Awards program globally.

Mark can be reached via e-mail at MBaltazar@brandspark.com; Twitter: @Mark_Baltazar. You can also visit the company website at www.brandspark.ca.

Nowadays, the family-run Reynders has over 60 printing presses and more than 450 printing stations covering flexography, offset, letterpress, screen, dry toner, wet toner and ink jet printing technologies, enabling the company to offer one of the broadest ranges of label printing equipment for a host of applications.

Its focus on maintaining its leading position through capital investment in the very latest label printing equipment that led to the installation of the first Domino N600i digital color label press at its Belgium production facility.

Chief executive officer Marc Reynders explains, “Over the past few years, label printing has been facing new challenges with customers demanding ever tighter delivery deadlines, shorter average run lengths, more personalized data; but still the highest quality of end product.  As a result, we needed to find solutions that can not only cope with these changing demands, but that also means adjusting our service offering for our customers.  It ultimately helps us to move our business forward in line with the changing dynamics of the industry.”

Marc Reynders CEO of Reynders Label Printing

When Reynders and his team first saw an early technology demonstration of the N600i at Ipex 2010, they were immediately impressed as the Domino digital printing press offers high levels of productivity combined with improved print quality for ink jet.

“We already had a number of HP Indigos, the latest Xeikon technologies and three Agfa Dotrix digital label presses all of which were doing a good job,” continues Reynders. “But to take Reynders to the next level in digital label production we needed a solution that could offer high quality digital printing at significantly increased speeds. The N600i was just what we were looking for.”

The Domino N600i four color digital label press offers a native 600dpi (dots per inch) print resolution and uses one of the smallest drop sizes (6pl) to deliver the highest quality output onto a range of coated paper and plastic label stocks, and operates at speeds of 50-75 meters per minute. Combined with a standard 333mm (13-inch) wide web width it provides up to 1,500-square meters of print per hour. In addition, by varying the droplet sizes delivered from a single print head combined with the composition of the ink, the N600i can reproduce a wide color gamut including over 80 percent of the pantone color range.

With so many label press technologies installed across Reynders multiple sites, the fact that Domino had integrated the Esko front end into its N600i added to its appeal to Reynders and assisted with its integration.

“We already worked with the Esko workflow and this together with the intuitive user interface made working with the N600i so much more straightforward,” says Reynders.

Installation didn’t go without its challenges, especially with the company agreeing to be a beta test site for Domino’s N600i, but both the Reynders and Domino teams worked together to ensure any issues were addressed and the installation met all requirements.  “It’s fair to say that with any beta site, installation can take longer than usual, but we are delighted with the outcome,” confirms Marc. “We always had complete confidence in Domino throughout the process. They listened to our requirements, were extremely helpful in exploring ways to overcome any issues and conducted the installation with the utmost professionalism.”

Within a short time, the operations team had the N600i running at production speeds of 50 meters per minute, a significantly higher rate than the company’s existing digital technologies, and were using the press for new mid-volume applications of up to 3,000 meters, well above the 1,000 meters limit they typically would schedule on digital machines.

The increased speed of throughput brought additional challenges for the operators, as it meant they could no longer manually check for rejects and quality of output, as was the procedure for the company’s slower running solutions.  As a result, Reynders installed an automated vision system onto the N600i line that could cope with verification of output at such high speeds, reducing operator intervention and adding further to production efficiencies.

Domino N600i

To further develop the flexibility and capabilities of the N600i, Reynders and the Domino team are working together to develop new inks as well as review the integration of inline die-cutting technology within the N600i production line.

“Although it is still early days, we are extremely impressed with the capabilities of the N600i,” enthuses Marc, who is already looking to exploit the potential it can offer in terms of longer term new business opportunities.

“The N600i has certainly lived up to our expectations of high resolution, high quality output at significantly higher operational speeds. The operation has been reliable and we are able to run much longer production jobs than we would normally print with digital technology, in this respect it is more targeted at replacing what we would normally run on flexo machines.

“If the N600i continues to perform to our expectations and we can achieve all our business goals, we will be considering further investment in this technology in the future,” concludes Marc.

About Domino

Founded in 1978 and headquartered in Cambridge, U.K., Domino has a global reputation for the development and manufacture of coding, marking and printing technologies that satisfy the requirements of manufacturers and commercial printers as well as its worldwide aftermarket products and customer support services. Its services for the commercial print sector include a range of high-end single and full color digital ink jet label presses enabling VDP and short run production as well as QR, barcode and numbering capabilities used within a wide range of applications including finishing/bindery, newspaper and magazines, tickets, tags and labels, business forms, plastic cards, gaming/lottery and direct mail and postal sectors. Domino’s additional ink jet technologies encompass binary, continuous, piezo and thermal solutions and controller systems for the application of variable data, unique and serialized numbering and interactive data coding for traceability and anti-counterfeiting within a range of market sectors. Domino’s ongoing growth – both organic and through acquisition—is underpinned by an unrivaled commitment to product development. This year (2013) the company is celebrating its 35th anniversary.

In 2011/12 the Domino Group (Domino Printing Sciences plc) achieved a turnover of £312.1 million. Domino was awarded the Queen’s Award for Continuous Achievement in International Trade in 2012 and was named Company of the Year in the 2010 UK PLC awards. The Group employs 2,200 people worldwide and sells to more than 120 countries through a global network of 25 subsidiary offices and more than 200 distributors.  Domino’s manufacturing facilities are situated in China, Germany, India, Sweden, U.K. and U.S.

For further information on Domino, please visit www.domino-printing.com.

While there’s no denying or understating the profound permanent impact of digital online publishing on the traditional global commercial printing markets—as any major newspaper publisher of note will sadly confirm—the widely-held popular belief that “Print is Dead” has little relevance in today’s global market for package printing and converting technologies.

According to the leading packaging industry group PMMI of Reston, Va., sales or packaging and converting equipment accounted for a 10 per cent share of the US$7.7 billion worth of packing machinery shipped by all U.S.-based packaging equipment manufacturers of packaging machinery—hardly a tell-tale sign of an industry in permanent decline and acute distress.

Not surprisingly, many major commercial printers who have seen the writing on the wall early enough have been stepping up their efforts to find new customers in the package printing and converting markets by investing in new-generation printing technologies able to accommodate cost-efficient production of various types of product labeling and selective pre-printed packaging products—albeit with various degrees of success.

Designed specifically for short-run folding-carton printing application, the new state-of-the-art Xerox Automated Packaging Solution (XAPS) was used to produce the paperboard boxes featured on this page.

And even more remarkably, leading brand names traditionally associated with office and other commercial printing technologies are also belatedly following suit—as evidenced by the rapid proliferation and popularity of the Hewlett-Packard (HP)’s famed Indigo series of all-digital label printing systems and, more recently, the grand entry of office photocopier giant Xerox into the package-printing marketplace that is starting to show its limits against the backdrop of a faltering global economy.

According to the U.S.-based market researchers Global Print, the global market for all print products is expected to reach an estimated US$724 billion by 2014, with the package printing segment accounting for US$202.1 billion of the projected total, and related prepress systems and services for another US$18.1 billion.

Conversely, the global commercial printing market (excluding newspapers) is expected to decline from US$366 billion in 2008 to $358.9 billion by 2014, according to the Global Print’s forecast, which also expects Asia to replace North America as the biggest regional market for print products and technologies during the forecast period with a nearly 35-percent global market share.

That said, the U.S. will still be the runaway biggest single market for print in 2014 at $185.9 billion, with Canada slipping from eighth to 10th place at US$18.9 billion, being surpassed by the fast-growing print demand in the BRIC economies of India and Brazil.

With more commercial and general printers turning to the packaging markets to maintain and grow their business, the last few years have witnessed a rapid acceleration in the development of more digital on-demand printing technologies and software to enable them to compete with the more established players, according to some prominent industry insiders.

“Just a little over 10 years ago, the graphic community was a ‘fat’ society,” says Larry Moore, director of Software Services North America for the leading global graphic arts prepress systems developer Esko Group, Belgian-based prepress hardware and software manufacturer operating five production facilities in Europe, along with factories in the U.S., China and India.

“For the most part, business was pretty good—until new market influences, namely the Internet and the post-9/11 economic conditions made the global print community much more cautious about its future prospects.

“In addition, short-run production from digital (presses) had not come of age yet,” Moore told Canadian Packaging in a recent interview. “For example, HP’s Indigo press was still early in its infancy.

“While product development was already becoming pretty advanced,” Moore relates, “it was just not as sophisticated as it is now—with very well-defined, targeted consumer product industry customers who are now even more focused on developing more product varieties and brand extensions than they ever used to be.”

Says Moore: “Many commercial printers who traditionally focused on publishing are starting to look at brand management/packaging and sign/display print applications, and are also trying to get involved in label or folding carton printing.

“Not only are these the new growth printing areas, but they would also involve a lot of the same equipment they used for their commercial printing work—thereby requiring less investment in new capital equipment.

“If they are successful, they could create a lot of competition for companies who have gotten used to competing on price, which could erode profits for everyone.

“The big challenge to existing companies that have always been involved in packaging is to offer services that exceed what others are doing,” Moore asserts.

“This could involve providing better collaboration tools, faster prepress delivery with new technologies, use of 3D proofing, etc.

“But while the intrusion of commercial printers into packaging could threaten existing business status quo, it could well turn out to be a good thing for the industry in the long run,” Moore expands.

“There is still extra capacity for smaller companies to get involved in smaller projects—for example, producing 200 pieces of packaging for some special widgets, which could help some smaller consumer product companies get off the ground.

“The biggest threat to our industry is complacency,” Moore proclaims. “Companies have to accept technology as it is introduced.”

The VSOP range of offset web presses manufactured by Müller Martini is designed to ensure fast changeover and lead times to facilitate cost-competitive printing of labels and flexible packaging products with superior print quality.

Office printing systems supplier Xerox certainly appears to be anticipating CPG companies to do just that—having recently introduced the company’s state-of-the-art Xerox Automated Packaging Solution System (XAPS) to the global graphic arts community, which is now available in North America after a series of successful startups in Europe, according to the company.

Described as the world’s first and only fully-integrated, inline digital solution for package printing applications, the XAPS system features a leading-edge iGe4 digital press designed primarily for short-run color printing at speeds of up to 110 packs per minute in one smooth, integrated process that also incorporates a Stora Enso Gallup buffering stacker, the Epic CT1-635 inline coater, and a Stora Enso Gallup DC 58 die-cutter to take care of the entire folding-carton production process.

“Xerox has been in the business of providing our (XAPS) solution for folding-carton producers in the European market for the last two to three years, and we are proud to have made this solution available in North America over the last 12 months,” says Chris Connor, Canadian director of high-end solution at the company’s Toronto-headquartered Xerox Canada Ltd. subsidiary.

“This technology is the logical evolution of our proprietary iGen Platform technology that we have already been marketing to the commercial print market for the past 10 years,” Connor relates.

According to Connor, it would have been unthinkable 10 years ago to adapt the iGen technology for packaging applications, “because none of the key technologies to make it happen existed yet.”

But that has all changed since then, according to Connor, thanks to important technological breakthroughs in digital printing capabilities, including:

• Improvements in image quality, up to 2,400 x 2,400-dpi (dots per inch);
• Increases in sheet size, up to 14.33” x 26”;
• Increases in paper weights to facilitate the printing of SBS (solid bleached sulphate) paperboard grades;
• Development of flexible inline coaters and die-cutters;
• Rapid evolution of automated packaging workflow systems and processes.

Says Connor: “The iGen Platform was designed by Xerox over 10 years ago with the intention to evolve it over time, with new capabilities and technological developments that would enable new industry applications in new segments such as the folding-carton market.”

Connor says that there have already been more than 30 successful XAPS system installations and startups, citing several notable examples such as:

• Dublin, Ireland-based Mediaware Digital producing boxes for the Microsoft Windows 7 software products;
• Production of personalized chocolate boxes via a high-tech process whereby clients are able to upload pictures and text from a website to print directly onto the boxes;
• Similar web-enable production of customized chewing gum containers, whereby clients can also upload pictures, text, names and colors to print onto the box covers;
• Production of pharmaceutical boxes with advanced security features that could one day replace the need for traditional instructions inserts by printing all the required text on the inside panels of the boxes.

“There are many key benefits of the XAPS systems that end-users can optimize to their advantage,” says Connor. “For example, the overall supply chain process associated with the way that Microsoft used to process new orders for Windows 7 boxes versus the way they do it in Europe, Asia and Africa has been radically enhanced by moving from print-to-inventory to print-in-demand methodology.

“You have the benefits of elimination of inventory and associated obsolescence, substantial reduction in the cost of production, substantial reduction in the turnaround time for box production, and the flexibility of allowing Microsoft purchasing agents to place their orders ‘on-demand’ for specific stores, in specific regions, on strictly as-needed basis,” states Connor.

Designed for handling a wide variety of materials, the new Kongsberg XN range of finishing tables from Esko features a modular tabletop industrial design, a choice of seven sizes and four different toolhead designs, and innovative insert tools such as solid board v-notching insert, a corrugated paper-core board v-notching insert, and a Braille tool insert.

He continues: “I really believe that Xerox is at the leading edge of rapid technology advances in digital printing with the XAPS technology, which already has proven to have great applicability and viability today to address the fast-changing requirements in the folding-carton industry, as Xerox continues to make the required R&D technology investments to keep us at the forefront of future technology advancements.

“Our belief at Xerox is that the size of the folding-carton market overall is going to be maintained over the course of the next 10 years,” Connor says.

“That said, the fast-changing market requirements—shorter runs, security features, environmental expectations, personalization, QR Codes, special marketing needs, and faster turnaround times etc.—will help ensure a significant increase in demand for short-run digital solutions in this market for the next 10 years—providing us with a significant growth opportunity.

Wolfgang Ruoff, product manager of printing presses with the leading German offset printing presses manufacturer Müller Martini Druckmaschinen GmbH, says that while changing CPG customer requirements will provide promising growth opportunities for suppliers of digital package printing, this trend does not mean inevitable obsolescence for the more traditional offset press technology that has also gone through a rigorous technological evolution in the last decade—enabling it to become a highly cost-effective solution for printing flexible packaging as well as folding cartons.

“We began printing film with offset machines about eight to 10 years ago to serve our traditional customers printing forms and direct mail products looking to move into new markets, as well as the traditional flexographic Rotogravure printers who needed new solutions for making them more cost-competitive for shorter-run applications, with higher print quality,” Ruoff recalls.

Designed primarily for flexographic printing of flexible packaging and folding cartons, the model CDI Spark 4260 imager from Esko is designed to provide fully-automatic plate loading and unloading for maximum throughput and minimum operator intervention.

According to Ruoff, the company has installed over 120 model Alprinta V and VSOP (Variable Sleeve Offset Printing) web offset presses worldwide for end-users looking to obtain such benefits in their label and film printing applications, with the popular Bolthouse energy beverages and Welch’s grape jelly brand using VSOP offest presses to print their branded shrinksleeves.

“We are the only company who can offer reliable and proven solutions for infinitely-variable offset solutions for both label and flexible packaging printing with exceptional print fidelity,” he says.

“In the old days, you would use rotogravure for high-quality printing and flexo for lower-quality printing,” says Ruoff, “but with shorter-run production, rotogravure is often just too expensive, whereas flexo is still not good enough, in some cases, to meet the higher-quality requirements for better shelf impact.

“With the frequently changing designs requested by the multinational brand-owners, there are really no repeat jobs any more,” says Ruoff, noting that a growing number of private-label and store brands are becoming increasing more demanding in their expectations of high print quality.

“Package design in general is moving up the corporate ladder and goes well beyond just graphics and up the corporate ladder,” he states. “The numbers of SKUs (stock-keeping units) are up significantly for just about every product category, as multinational brand-owners want to be in every price point up and down the shelf.

“Utilizing our presses enables them to do that cost-effectively by offering them the benefits of best printing quality, shortest lead-times for printing new jobs, the industry’s lowest image-carrier costs, fast changeover times, the option to build customized hybrid presses with integrated flexo or rotogravure units, and inline converting processes such as die-cutting and lamination of self-adhesive labels.”

And over the years, the London, Ont.-based family business has come a long way from being exclusively a niche smoked-meats processor specializing in pork to diversify into various turkey, chicken, beef and veal products to keep up with the constant shifts in consumers tastes in timely fashion.

But while this naturally involved many changes to the way the 29-year-old company manufactured its products with continuous investment in the latest-generation processing and packaging technologies—it remained faithfully committed to maintaining the same traditional, authentic Old World cooking recipes that have made it such a well-respected brand name in the first place.

Sikorski Sausages purchased a new Multivac R535 thermoformer to perform MAP and vacuum-packing of the company’s diverse bacons, hams and sausages.

In fact, it didn’t take the company all that long to quickly find its business niche by supplying its flavorful and smoky deli meats and sausages to the well-established Polish and other central and eastern European communities in the region, faithfully replicating many beloved old-school recipes of long and short sausages, wieners, deli meats, cold-cuts, patés and head cheeses, along with a healthy range of muscled hams, loins, roasts and bacon.

The warm marketplace response to its products so soon after startup prompted it to form a sister retail company under the Starsky Foods banner—today operating three strategic retail locations in the nearby densely-populated Ontario cities of Hamilton, Mississauga and Oakville.

Along with shipping its meats to Starsky Foods and about 400 smaller mom-and-pop retailers catering to the European ethnic communities, Sikorski Sausages today also supplies the deli counters of large grocery retail chains like Loblaws, Fortinos, Zehrs, Longo’s, Highland Farms, Commisso’s Fresh Foods and Sobeys—capping off three years of rapid growth that has its chief executive officer Peter Sikorski highly upbeat about the company’s growth potential.

Leading Edge

“Although the Sikorski family was comfortable with the success and growth of the company, I looked at it and thought that if we don’t modernize our facility and food safety procedures, the company would lose its competitive edge in a year or two,” recalls Peter, the eldest son of company founder Marek Sikorski who joined the family business five years ago after completing his business degree at the University of Toronto.

“I really wanted to apply my energy and the business acumen I had acquired in school to take my family business up to the next level,” Sikorski told Canadian Packaging on a recent visit to the company’s modern, ultra-clean London facility.

After placing links of smoked sausages into a deep film tray, a line worker prepares the Multivac 535 thermoformer to package bulk sausages in MAP packs.

After receiving due guidance and advice from his father, Sikorski launched a five-year plan that would not only ensure the company’s survival, he explains, but help propel it to the very forefront of European-style meat processing in Ontario—a plan that involved taking the small, family-owned business into a new state-of-the-art facility where food safety would be of the utmost importance.

Size Matters

When the company doors had first opened in 1983, it was a mere 1,500-square-foot shop located in one of four units of a multi-use business complex, but between 1985 and 1995 it acquired and equipped the three remaining units to expand production.

In 1995, Sikorski Sausages coordinated a major expansion and retrofit of the 10,000-square-foot plant to facilitate higher food safety standards and production levels, enabling it to finally become a player of note in the Ontario meat-processing world.

By 2008, Sikorski says that although the brand had developed great customer loyalty by effectively differentiating itself from the competition, he felt that future product demand was still being constrained by limited and aging production space, along with increasing sanitation and food safety regulations.

“The goal was to retrofit the existing facility and to build a 15,000-square-foot addition that would update Sikorski Sausages with the latest in food safety systems, while also creating a space that would allow us to triple our production capacity,” states Sikorski.

Sikorski recalls he spent a year designing the new facility with the help of plant managers, to ensure that rooms were built to meet their specific purpose, a modular design that would allow for future expansion at the lowest possible future costs.

Along with Krzysztof Doniec, the company’s chief mechanic, Sikorski opted to manage the construction personally, rather than hire a general contractor.

Breaking ground in 2009, the project was completed by the end of 2011, with the company continuing its day-to-day business while the expansion went on around it.

“Although the old 10,000-square-foot facility was nothing to sneeze at, nowadays we process some 140 SKUs (stock-keeping units) of smoked meats in a state-of-the-art, 25,000-square-foot plant with 48 dedicated employees,” relates Sikorski, recalling the comprehensive $4.5-million modernization project.

Using MAP gas-mix supplied by Air Liquide, the R535 thermoformer from Multivac provides a clean and clear high-barrier film package.

Sikorski says that upon completion of the upgrade, the company was only running four days of production a week.

“But that didn’t last too long,” he notes. “To facilitate growth, we knew we would need a larger sales force, new marketing strategies, and a plan to introduce our products to whole new market segments.”

Along with capacity expansion, Sikorski Sausages also had to make the necessary capital investments in top-of-the-line packaging equipment in order to protect its products from contamination after they leave the processing facility.

Packed in plastic film supplied by Winpack, smoked meats await order-picking inside the ShuttleBin 330 folding containers manufactured by Macro Plastics.

One of those investments was a brand new Multivac R535 thermoformer capable of performing both MAP (modified-atmosphere packaging) and vacuum-packing for bulkier products as bacon, hams and sausages.

Along with being a high-speed, high-output machine, Sikorski is keen to point out that the R535 helps ensure a consistent hygiene cycle as this packaging solution exceeds international safety requirements.

“And it also provides us with a very smooth packaging process,” mentions Sikorski, “with greater efficiency that helps us save time and resources.”

According to Multivac, the R535 is designed for easy comprehensive cleaning—both inside and out—with modifications to the film transport chain guide, chain design, lifting mechanisms, motors, valves and mechanical elements, and an easy-to-open frame profile for cleaning and maintenance.

The Multivac R535 thermoformer incorporates an SEW-Eurodrive Movitrac frequency inverter inside the control panel for smooth power distribution.

Sikorski says he really appreciates the R535 system’s smooth slanted surfaces—without a single edge or corner—so drainage after cleaning ensures that no residual dirt remains on the surface of the machine. “We also like the fact that we can quickly and easily change tooling on the R535, thanks to its side extraction mechanism,” admits Sikorski. “It has a simple drawer action that we can use without having to take apart the hot tool surface.”

Sikorski says the plant’s R535 uses a large 660-millimeter die that helps form deep drawn packages to seal in the freshness of bulk meats.

Aside from the obvious benefit that MAP process provides to meat processors, Sikorski says that ultimately he chose to use the system to better protect the product during the rigors of the shipping process.

The plant’s second packaging line employs a VC999 07P vacuum-packer and a 85.47i hot-water shrink tank.

“At this point, shelf-life becomes a non-issue for us,” he explains. “Part of our philosophy is that we treat our product like fresh bread.

“We deliver fresh product to each of our 400-plus stores at least once per week and impress on the deli manager to order only as much product as they feel they will sell before the next shipment,” he explains.

In essence, Sikorski says he prefers to think of the R535 machine “like a dust cover: to protect it from airborne pathogens and to get it safely from our facility to the customer’s meat counter.”

For MAP sealing, Sikorski Sausages utilizes a gas mix of 25-per-cent carbon-dioxide and 75-per-cent nitrogen supplied by Air Liquide, a leading global manufacturer in the supply of industrial gases.

Sikorski recalls: “I had been familiar with Multivac and their wide range of products for quite some time before we purchased one. For me, I really like the fact that Multivac was known for their superior level of construction and quality.

“No processor wants downtime, and with Multivac, we knew the robustness of the R535 was exactly what we required as our company continues to grow,” he states.

Along with a Beckhoff 12-inch touchscreen HMI (human-machine interface) ELO Accutouch terminal, the machine utilizes the high-performance Busch R5 pumps and Norgren pneumatics, while its control panel incorporates Siemens Sitop power supplies, ABB circuit-breakers, and a SEW-Eurodrive Movitrac frequency inverter.

On another production line, after manually loading a temperature sensitive film vacuum bag with a meat portion, workers place the packs into a VC999 07P vacuum-packing machine, which seals the meat within the bags by applying pressure and heat.

A sampling of many Sikorski Sausages smoked meat products packaged by the the VC999 07P vacuum-packer.

The sealed bags are then placed onto a conveyor and moved into a VC999 85.47i shrink-tank, which uses hot water to further shrink the bag film around the meat product to produce a perfect-looking final package.

After the packaging is done, Sikorski Sausages stores the product within collapsible, reusable polypropylene plastic ShuttleBin 330 folding containers manufactured by Macro Plastics Inc.

The product is then picked and hand-packed into corrugated cartons supplied by Rock-Tenn, which are then weighed and have an adhesive label printed by an Ishida pre-pack scale printer.

A product-filled corrugated carton from Rock-Tenn makes a stop to be weighed and have a shipping label, made by an Ishida pre-pack scale printer, applied to the top panel.

With the company currently in the process of achieving federal certification, Sikorski says he is pleased with his new facility and its new high levels of hygiene and food safety.

“I am very proud to have a state-of-the-art facility where our food safety is paramount,” extols Sikorski.

“We placed all conduits away from the walls to make them easier to clean behind; we created curved edges along all wall corners; the floors are at a two-percent slope to accommodate better drainage, and are coated with a polyurethane epoxy finish for better cleanability; and we utilize a rack-type refrigeration system that sends me an email if the temperature of any room deviates from set thresholds.”

States Sikorski: “The upgraded facility, the fantastic new thermoformer, and all of the safety protocols we have initiated have all helped Sikorski Sausages grow these past three years, but more importantly, they have also helped us prepare for the future as well.”

Featuring a highly-efficient continuous box (CB) motion design, the new high-speed VFFS (vertical form/fill/seal) bulk foodservice pouch packaging machine is the latest model in Curwood’s market-leading Liquiflex AV equipment series.

Haliburton is the first U.S. food company to install and evaluate the new high-speed technology.

The company, which packages a wide variety of food products for retail, foodservice and industrial customers, uses the new VFFS pouch machine and Liquiflex Advance barrier films for bulk hot fill and cold fill soups, salsa and sauce applications in pouch sizes from one to 10-pounds.

According to Haliburton, who accepted delivery of the machine in May of 2012, the new Liquiflex machine has exceeded expectations with significant improvements:

• Acceleration of packaging throughput to over 80 packages per minute, which more than doubles head-to-head productivity from previous packaging rates;
• Outstanding processing and weight control, which allowed Haliburton to reduce product giveaway by two-thirds;
• Quick change-out between product sizes and types for improved versatility, flexibility and speed in responding to customer demands, with significantly reduced downtime;
• Up to 30 percent source reduction through thinner, proprietary 13-layer Liquiflex Advance barrier bulk liquid films.

Haliburton president and chief executive officer Ian Schenkel says: “The nature of our business requires us to be fast and flexible to meet changing customer needs in the most cost-effective way possible. The Liquiflex AV-2.2-CB-HF machine is the first of its kind VFFS machine that could bring us to the 80-plus packages per minute level. It also delivers added flexibility to respond to customer and market needs. It’s been a pleasure to partner with Curwood to innovate packaging and process solutions that create value for our customers while providing a true business advantage.”

Supported from initial installation through commercial production by Curwood field and technical service, the Liquiflex film/equipment platform quickly proved its mettle, prompting Haliburton to lease four more machines for delivery fourth quarter of 2012.

Curwood’s Liquiflex AV Series VFFS equipment combines accelerated speed and performance with advanced engineering to simplify setup, operation, changeover and maintenance. Liquiflex AV Series machines complement Curwood’s Liquiflex Advance bulk liquid pouch film, a proprietary 13-layer structure with redundant nylon, PE and EVOH layers for unprecedented strength, abuse resistance and barrier.

Available exclusively through Curwood, Liquiflex AV Series equipment features a space- efficient footprint and incorporates standard Rockwell Automation Allen-Bradley controls for proven, reliable operation and ease of service. The machines are available in four servo-driven models, including the new high-speed CB “Continuous Box Motion” option, and can be easily customized for code dating, conveying, weighing systems or other enhancements.

The equipment platform is field-proven in over 400 machine installations worldwide and incorporates advanced, simple-to-operate controls and features.

About Haliburton International Foods

Haliburton is a leading manufacturer of food products for retail, food service and industrial food companies. The company’s unique line of products includes individually quick-frozen roasted vegetables, vegetable blends, soups, salsas, sauces and aseptically processed industrial food ingredients.

About Curwood

Known for its technological leadership in high-barrier packaging, Curwood is a preferred supplier of innovative packaging materials and systems for food, beverage, household, industrial and personal care industries. Headquartered in Oshkosh, Wisconsin, Curwood is part of the Bemis Company family of companies. For more information call: 1-800-544-4672, visit www.curwood.com or contact via e-mail at liquiflex@bemis.com.

About Bemis Company

Bemis is a major supplier of flexible packaging and pressure sensitive materials used by leading food, consumer products, healthcare and other companies worldwide. More information is available at www.bemis.com.

But despite being related to the infamous cannabis plant family, 90 per cent of the estimated 2,000 know hemp plant varieties contain virtually negligible amounts of the illicit psychoactive THC (tetrahydrocannabinol) responsible for producing the pot “high” that has given the plant its shady, if highly questionable, reputation as a gateway drug to more serious substance addictions.

The truth is that the lion’s share of hemp plants can be processed to make a wide range of useful products, including products with well-proven and tested health benefits.

“What people don’t realize is that hemp, along with offering a healthy food, can also be used effectively in the manufacture of many environmentally-friendly products such as paper, textiles, biocomposites and sustainable building materials,” points out Tom Greaves, director of operations with Manitoba Harvest Hemp Foods.

Located at a 20,000-square-foot production facility in Winnipeg, the 85-employee company produces a surprisingly broad range of popular hemp-based products, including the Hemp Hearts brand of raw shelled hemp seeds, protein powders, hemp oil and the Hemp Bliss brand of beverages, along with doing some private-label work for other customers.

According to Greaves, the hemp processed by his company offers average everyday consumers a plethora of healthy benefits—especially for those people looking to add essential omegas and plant-based easy-to-digest protein into their daily diet.

“The best part of our products, especially Hemp Hearts, is that they taste great,” Greaves told Canadian Packaging in a recent interview, adding that Manitoba Harvest products can be found at most health-food stores across Canada and the U.S., as well as in the aisles of leading grocery retailers such as Whole Foods, Loblaws, Safeway and Costco.

Better Choice
“We offer a choice of Certified Organic and Natural,” he states, “and they are Kosher-certified made at our state-of-the-art facility.”

Containing 10 essential amino acids, edible hemp offers a rich and balanced source of Omega-3, Omega-6 and the rare GLA (gamma linolenic acid) fatty acids that provide a natural means for controlling cholesterol levels and blood pressure levels, Greaves explains, citing proven benefits of healthy heart maintenance and hormonal balance.

Tasty, edible hulled hemp seeds are claimed to provide a multitude of health benefits to the consumers.

The tasty and easily-digested hemp seeds are also packed with other important nutrients such as chlorophyll, vitamins E and B and phosphorus, potassium, magnesium and calcium—all key for effective energy metabolism, and protein and bone synthesis—as well as folic acid, which is an important ingredient for women trying to become pregnant.

While Manitoba Harvest has been at the forefront of Canada’s hemp growing and processing industry since it began operation in 1998, the company’s roots trace back to the early 1990s, when company co-founders Mike Fata, Martin Moravcik and Alex Chwaiewsky helped legalize hemp, working with farmers and academics from the early 1990s.

The eventual legalization of hemp farming by 1998 finally resulted in Manitoba Harvest opening up shop and begin producing high-quality hemp food products in relatively small quantities at first, while getting actively involved in educating the public on the many misconceptions of the hemp seeds and providing information of its numerous health benefits.

“We started out small—initially selling fresh hemp oil and shelled hemp seeds at local farmer’s markets and to local retailers,” Greaves relates.

“But thanks to grass roots marketing, we had grown to the point that by 2001 we were preparing our first shipment of hemp to the U.S.”

Unfortunately the United States Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA) had other ideas at the time—actively campaigning to make the sale of all hemp foods illegal in the U.S.

Legal Spat
However, after a drawn-out, three-year legal battle spearheaded by the not-for-profit Hemp Industries Association, fledgling hemp producers such as Manitoba Harvest finally got their wish.

“It was a long three years, and the ban regarding the sale of hemp foods in the U.S. was a major hurdle for Manitoba Harvest,” says Greaves, “but although it slowed us down, it did not deter our growth.”

In fact, Manitoba Harvest today ranks as the largest vertically-integrated hemp-foods manufacturer in the world, according to Greaves.

“We control every aspect of the production process—from sourcing crops, to food processing, packaging and distribution,” reveals Greaves.

“And we hold ourselves to the highest operational standards.”

Director of operations Tom Greaves holds up a bag of Manitoba Harvest Hemp Hearts edible hemp seeds.

To ensure a reliable product supply, Manitoba Harvest partners directly with hemp farmers to source the raw, non-genetically modified hemp seed.

“The pre-screened farmers deliver their product directly to our facility, which creates a closed-loop sourcing system,” he explains.

“We take the raw hemp seeds and other natural, organic and fair-trade ingredients, do quality-control testing, and only then process them to produce our various products fresh in-house at our kosher and organic-certified facility.”

According to Greaves, the plant undergoes a series of voluntary certifications and procedural standards audits each year to maintain its hard-earned reputation for high product quality and safety.

Peace of Mind
“It’s simply a peace-of-mind effort for us and our consumers to know that you can trust exactly where your food is coming from,” he explains, pointing out the company is in the process of becoming the world’s first hemp food producer to achieve the prestigious BRC (British Retail Consortium) food safety certification, along with also being HACCP (Hazard Analysis and Critical Control Points)-certified and boasting regularly updated GMP (Good Manufacturing Practices) validation.

Operating a 24-hours-day, five-days-a-week schedule to run the plant’s two production and two packaging lines, the company is nowadays reaping the rewards of all its early hard work in a big way, says Greaves, citing 50 percent annual business growth over the last five years and aiming for a 100-percent sales increase for this year, compared to 2011.

“In fact, we do not expect to see our growth to slow down any time soon,” he reasons, “with our increasingly more health-conscious society really looking for new healthy food products that also tastes great.”

Says Greaves: “There are many reasons for our success, including marketing, sales and the product teams, but a large part of it is really due to our vertical integration, which provides us with the ability to provide a diverse range of very high quality products into the marketplace.”

Built for Speed
To maintain those high-quality standards well into the future, the company recently installed a highly advanced, state-of-the-art Pack 320 model X-Ray product inspection system—manufactured by Eagle Product Inspection of Tampa, Fla.—to perform full top-to-bottom inspection of hemp seeds packaged on the plant’s existing, semi-automated filling equipment.

Purchased via packaging systems supplier and integrator Plan Automation, the model Pack 320 X-Ray system from Eagle Product Inspection provides Manitoba Harvest with a critical layer of quality control assurance.

Designed for high-speed flowwrap lines handling small- to mid-sized packaged items, the high-speed Pack 320 X-Ray system uses its powerful detection capabilities to examine items at speeds up to 1,200 units per minute, with 320-mm (12-inch) detector coverage, employing a high-precision push-arm rejection system with Festo pneumatic components to instantly eject contaminant-positive packs from the line.

“We wanted to install the Pack 320 X-Ray equipment to ensure customers that we are providing the highest quality hemp food product possible into the marketplace,” states Greaves, complimenting packaging systems supplier and integrator Plan Automation of Orangeville, Ont., for the successful system installation and startup this past August.

“Right from the initial contact, Plan Automation was very professional and easy to work with,” mentions Greaves. “Not only do they possess a very high level of customer service which showed through during the project, but their staff was very knowledgeable, which allowed for a smooth implementation and startup of our new equipment.”

As Plan Automation’s X-Ray inspection specialist Mat Bédard recalls: “Although Manitoba Harvest initially said they only required an X-Ray system, after going to their plant to see their operation, we were able to offer them further advice on how we could improve the overall flow of their productions lines.

“To help them reorganize the packaging room,” Bédard relates, “we designed the floor layout, uncrated the new equipment, positioned it and leveled it with other equipment, and provided fuller integration between conveyors and components, making sure the whole line ran to Manitoba Harvest’s specifications.

“It turned out that Manitoba Harvest was actually interested in a full turnkey solution,” says Bédard, adding Plan Automation also supplied the Manitoba Harvest plant with a Wexxar-Bel accumulation table, along with three conveyors from Allegro Industries with full washdown capabilities and constructed to meet all the required AMI (American Meat Institute) standards, to round out the entire project.

“Having completed the redesign of our packaging room to accommodate the new X-Ray equipment in the summer, we are now currently working on some significant upgrades throughout the remaining parts of our facility that will take place in the next few months,” says Greaves, citing much improved line performance and efficiencies in the upgraded packaging room.

Other important pieces of key packaging equipment installed at the Winnipeg plant before last summer include two Wexxar-Bel WFPS 5150 semi-automatic form/pack/seal combination units that actually combine the features of the model BEL 505 semi-automatic case former and pack station with the model BEL 150 pressure-sensitive case taper in one high-performance, compact-design system.

Passing the Festo pneumatic reject system positioned after the Eagle model 320 X-Ray system, bags of hemp product revolve on a Wexxar-Bel accumulation table before case-packed.

Purchased via Techno Pak of Sainte-Julie, Que., the hard-working WFPS 5150 systems are ergonomically-designed to enable a single plant employee to load cases onto the BEL 505, holding the case in place with its bottom flaps closed.

After the operator loads finished product into the box and folds the top flaps down, the case is pushed through the BEL 150 case taper sealing the top and bottom of the case in a single fluid operation.

Power to Spare
Along with offering a healthy food alternative, Manitoba Harvest supports environmental sustainability, not just as a goal, but as a social responsibility partnering with Renewable Choice to support the development of wind power projects, Greaves relates, and also has offset conventional electricity use in its facility by purchasing renewable energy credits (RECs) that guarantee that the energy used is replaced on the national power grid with energy generated by renewable energy sources.

Moreover, Manitoba Harvest also uses energy-efficient lighting and heating and recycled paper products in its office, while the plant’s usage of natural gas is similarly counteracted with carbon offsets, according to Greaves.

Whole hemp seed stored in bulk-sized tote bags awaiting quality control testing before being released for processing and packaging in the Manitoba Harvest plant’s production area.

“By taking steps to reduce our electricity usage, we also reduce our environmental impact by purchasing RECs,” says Greaves, “which is the equivalent of planting 1,009 mature trees and not driving an average car 438,464 kilometers (272,448 miles).”

Naturally, the lion’s share of all the product packaging used by Manitoba Harvest is made from recyclable and/or reusable materials, Greaves point out.

“We support sustainable agriculture by endorsing environmentally-friendly, non-intrusive farming practices,” says Greaves.

“We have a team that works closely with farmers, helping to educate them on hemp agronomy and encouraging more hemp acres to be grown.”

States Greaves: “When you choose Manitoba Harvest products, you can be assured that you are also making a choice for environmentally-conscious business practices.

“We are very proud of what we do at Manitoba Harvest,” he sums up, “and want our customers to feel good about supporting us as their business partner.

“We produce a darn good line of healthy hemp food products to which Canadian consumers are really starting to respond,” he concludes, “and that bodes really well for the future of our company and for the future of the hemp industry at large.”

Photos courtesy of Manitoba Harvest Hemp Foods.

For all that, there is no getting around the fact that Canada’s food manufacturing industry is faced with the challenge of improving its competitiveness in the global market in a big way in coming years, which is unlikely to happen without a meaningful infusion of new human resources and talent armed with the right skillsets and technical know-how to fill the many important jobs and positions that often go begging—due to the puzzling lack of qualified candidates.

Which is exactly the labor market riddle that folks at the Kitchener, Ont.-based Conestoga College Institute of Technology and Advanced Learning have set out to resolve in a big way with the recent opening of the school’s Institute of Food Processing Technology (IFPT) center—located at the school’s satellite campus in the nearby city of Cambridge.

While the fledgling new program is only in its second year of existence, it has already attracted solid backing and support from influential institutions like the Alliance of Ontario Food Processors, Ontario Ministry of Agriculture, Food and Rural Affairs (OMAFRA), Food Processing Human Resources Council, and other organizations with a vested interest in seeing the college succeed in developing new training tools and competencies to lift the critically-important food processing sector to new heights.

Institute of Food Processing Technology’s chair Luis Garcia (left) and technologist Barry Bremner pose beside the Multivac H100 pick-and-place robotic packer.

“The Alliance of Food Processors was actually the industry group that conceived the idea of this program,” explains IFPT chair Luis Garcia. “Its members got involved with the concept right away and pushed the idea along to make it a reality.

“The bottom line is that we all want to make it easier for well-trained individuals to get a job in the industry,” says Garcia, describing IFPT’s intensive, two-year training program—the only one of its kind in Canada—that will turn out properly-trained food-processing technicians ready to take on and conquer the many day-to-day challenges of the fiercely competitive global food-processing industries.

Skill Shortage
Says Garcia: “Our industry acknowledges that there is a lack of skilled employees available for our workforce, which is why companies always seem to have positions available for people who have the appropriate abilities and training.

“Alas, many companies just aren’t able to find the qualified people they really need, which is really a major problem for all Canadian industries in general.

“And that is where the IFPT program is designed to help the industry out,” Garcia told Canadian Packaging during a recent visit to the new 260,000-square-foot LEED (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design) silver-certified building where the IFPT offers part-time adult education in advanced sanitation, and food-processing supervisor skill and food safety training—on top of its full-time co-op food processing technician and food processing techniques programs.

In addition, IFPT administers an apprenticeship program for aspiring food manufacturing process operators—delivered as a combination of online and in-class sessions with extensive complementary hands-on experience.

“The IFPT opened its doors to students in September of 2011 with six students,” recalls Garcia.

“This year we already have 13 students, and the eventual goal is to be enrolling 24 new full-time students per year,” says Garcia, estimating that there are well over 3,000 food-and-beverage producers operating in the province of Ontario alone.

“The food-processing industry is always in need of highly-skilled workers, and that is exactly what we are going to provide,” says Garcia, pointing out that the college’s three-level process operator apprenticeship program comprises 300 hours of in-class instruction and 4,000 apprenticeship hours supervised by qualified industry professionals.

“Our focus is to provide a skilled equipment operator and maintenance staff employee,” Garcia explains, “which is why we teach both mechanical and electrical theory in combination with hands-on application and extensive food-testing training.

“We want our students to really appreciate the importance of product quality testing in the food industry,” he says, “even if its something they will not have to perform after they enter the workforce.”

After a Graphics Packaging International denester places trays onto a conveyor, fresh-cut carrots are placed into the trays by a Multipond 12-head weigher installed by Abbey Packaging Equipment.

To attract bright students into the program, Conestoga College made a substantial $5-million capital investment to equip the new pilot plant with the highest-quality processing and packaging line equipment available, Garcia relates, with both the provincial and federal government chipping in to get the project rolling.

Best Buy
“To give our students the best hands-on experience possible, we purchased components to construct a bakery line, a beverage/pasteurization bottling line, and a fresh vegetable line,” says Garcia.

“A bid for proposals was placed on a government website requesting the installation of a full line,” relates IFPT technologist Barry Bremner, saying that the winning bid submitted by the Elmira, Ont.-based engineering services provider Tri-Mach Group Inc. specified the best way to purchase, install and commission the pilot-plant’s fresh-vegetable line.

A compact, fully-automatic Multivac T300 tray-sealer combines innovative machine technology with a hygienic design to provide IFPT students with an excellent learning platform to hone their food process operating skills.

Working closely with a group of suppliers selected from an intensive bidding process, Tri-Mach proceeded to assemble and integrate the pilot plant’s fresh vegetable line with an array of new equipment, including:

• a Nilma vegetable peeler, powered by a Bonfiglioli motor;
• a Kronen GS10 slicer and VG010 washer;
• a Multivac T300 tray-sealer and model MR 6411 labeler;
• a plastic tray denester from Graphic Packaging International;
• a Multipond LW1201-B 12-head portable combination weigher;
• a Multivac H100 pick-and-place robot;
• a Mettler-Toledo checkweigher;
• an S+S Inspection metal detection system;
• Tri-Mach-made sorting tables and custom-designed ‘everclean’ conveyors;
• a Schneider Electric Magelis HMI (human-machine interface) that controls the conveyor system under the Multipond.

“If this all seems like a lot of equipment or even overkill—it’s not,” Garcia asserts.

“It’s pretty much what any standard fresh-produce line is going to encompass equipment-wise, and we want to ensure students get a proper education here,” says Garcia, reserving special praise to the Burlington, Ont.-based Multipond distributor Abbey Packaging Equipment Ltd. for facilitating and managing the Multipond weighing and portioning equipment that could handle portioned fresh vegetables like carrots, onions, potatoes., etc., as specified by Tri-Mach.

“We have dealt with hundreds of suppliers on this undertaking, and working with Abbey Packaging was really a great experience,” extols Bremner.

“It became very apparent that Abbey Packaging was a great choice—the flawless equipment, a superb training professional, and an easy-to-work-with team made the whole experience a good one,” he says, recalling that Abbey Packaging’s service technician was right there on the spot when the Multipond system was first started up.

A Videojet 1220 small-character inkjet printer used to print lot and best-before codes onto bottling line containers.

Perfect Start
“It ran perfectly from the onset,” explains Bremner, “but the service tech believed it could run even better, and spent the better part of the day making it happen.”

According to Bremner, the Abbey Packaging technician discovered that the servomotor-driven distribution can that delivers product to the 12 weighscales was better suited for harder-to-move products, and suggested installing a vibratory unit and trays would facilitate better movement for the non-leafy products.

The Multivac H100 case-packer uses pick-and-place robotics to pack finished trays into corrugated cartons.

“Their technician installed the new equipment, added the vibration electronics controls, software and wiring,” recounts Bremner. “But unlike with many other suppliers, there was no work-order, change notice, invoice or restocking charges.

“They just wanted to make sure their equipment was working perfectly for the customer—a concept which seems to have become forgotten in the world of engineered solutions,” Bremner remarks.

A pair of high-quality Tagliavini Rotovent model ovens and proofers/retarders designed for compact size, versatility and energy savings are employed in the IFPT’s bakery.

As pleased as they are with the fresh-vegetable line, Bremner and Garcia are also justifiably proud of the impressive baked goods line at the pilot plant, featuring:

• planetary and spiral mixers supplied by Globe Equipment and Abrigo Industrial Machines, respectively;
• a Vemag PC878 model portioner from Reiser;
• a Konig Harvest bun-maker and MiniRex Futura portioner;
• indexing and retracting conveyors supplied by Tri-Mach;
• two Tagliavini Rotovent TVT 665E model ovens and a double retarder proofer;
• a spiral conveyor from Tri-Mach, controlled via a Magelis HMI terminal, used for cooling the fresh-baked product;
• a Zenith form/fill/seal vertical bagger, manufactured by PFM Packaging Machinery Corp.

For its part, the pilot plant’s bottling line consists of:

Freshly-made buns baked by IFPT students cool down as they move along the Tri-Mach spiral conveyor for packing.

• liquid mixing and dispersion equipment supplied by Quadro Engineering, IKA Works, Silverson, Viking Canada, Idex, Highland Equipment and Stainless Process;
• an UHT (ultra-high temperature) SPX pasteurizer that heats up and chills product in a few seconds;
• an Accutek Packaging Equipment bottle unscrambler and bottle rinser;
• an SPX aseptic tank with a Magelis HMI;
• a trayformer and a rotary bottle-filler capable of running at 60 bottles per minute, manufactured by Biner Ellison High Speed Packaging Machinery, outfitted with a Delta Electronics HMI;
• plastic bottles donated by Lassonde Beverages Canada;
• bottle caps donated by Pano Caps;
• a Pillar Technologies capper capable of utilizing twistoff caps or caps outfitted with induction safety seals;
• Tri-Mach conveyors;
• a self-adhesive label-applicating system from Labelette;
• an Aesus Systems heat tunnel and shrinksleeving equipment to apply full-body film wrap and/or tamper-evident neck bands, featuring a Rockwell Automation Allen-Bradley PanelView C300 control terminal;
• a small-character Videojet 1220 inkjet printer and a P3400 label printer;
• corrugated cartons supplied by Integrated Packaging Systems;
• a Phase Fire Shrink Technologies shrinkwrap and heat tunnel.
  

  After cooling on a Tri-Mach spiral conveyor, freshly-baked goods are packed via a vertical form/fill/seal Zenith bagger from PFM Packaging Machinery.

Win-Win
“Equally important to learning how to operate a food processing line is the clean-up and sanitation issues that surround it,” explains Garcia, “which is why we offer a strong course on this subject.”

Garcia mentions that the IFPT has achieved a win-win partnership with Sani-Marc Group, who provide chemical products and technical assistance to the school in exchange for being allowed to schedule R&D (research & development) time in the facility, along with training for their clients.

A Multivac MR 6411 labeler applies adhesive labels onto tray of carrots on the fresh-vegetable packaging line.

As well, the facility also boasts a Qualtech CIP (clean-in-place) system that is used to sanitize the preparation equipment, filler, UHT and septic tanks.

“In addition, we have a COP (clean-out-of-place) tank and all the equipment necessary to effectively clean and sanitize conveyors, floors, walls and ceilings,” says Garcia. “We use foaming and gelling technologies that are proven to be more effective both from a cleaning and a cost point of view.”

Bremner points out that IFPT also has a liquid process training system—a large, hands-on workboard—supplied by fluid control experts Bürkert featuring Siemens‘ Simatic Panel Touch HMI that allows the students to design and build an automated efficient set up of a liquid process line.

A Vemag PC878 portion controller from Reiser is used by IFPT students to prepare the fresh-baked goods for packaging.

Auto Pilot
Says Bremner: “We have had some very good suppliers and contributors as we built the pilot plant.

“Working with Abbey Packaging was an absolute pleasure, as they provided the right equipment, the right service and expertise and a commitment to make it perfectly fit our requirements,” he adds.

Aside from the mechanical and electrical knowledge imparted to each student, Garcia is adamant that the IFPT program teach them something equally as important.

A Siemens S7-200 CN PLC control (left) and a pair of Schneider Electric’s 240 VDC inductive sensors controlling the UHT (ultra-high temperature) pasteurizing line.

“You can have all the knowledge in the world, but if you are unable to work as part of a team, your career in this industry will be short-lived,” relates Garcia.

“We teach teamwork, as workers should be conscious of the entire production line and be in agreement to the best operating solution that won’t impact the overall quality, safety or productivity of the line.”

Sums up Garcia: “We don’t want to produce graduates simply to be part of a business: We want our graduates to help that business grow!”

Two of the three food process packaging lines at the IFPT pilot plant include the fresh-vegetable line (left) and the bottling line (center), with clean-up and sanitation equipment strategically positioned nearby on the right to provide students with a real-life food-processing production environment.

Located just north of Montreal in Blainville, Que., the company is a third-generation, family-owned business that has come a very long way since opening its doors back in 1934—having evolved from a spice distributor to a spice-blend manufacturer in 1963, and nowadays, along with its spices, it finds itself a well-respected condiments and ingredients supplier for eastern Canada’s meat-processing industry, especially in the ready-to-cook and ready-to-eat meals segments, as well as a highly successful brand-owner in its own right.

“The ready-to-eat and ready-to-cook meals are anything but a trend,” states company owner and president Marc Montour. “They are a reality.

“Because modern families nowadays often have the two spouses working full-time, there is very little time to cook and present the traditional family dinner,” says Montour, explaining the rapid proliferation of such prepared meal solutions at major grocery chains, supermarkets and other retail food outlets right across Canada in recent years.

New to the packaging business, Montour purchased a complete filling and capping line from Capmatic, including the Accurofill volumetric piston filler capable of handling a broad range of liquid, medium- and high-viscosity products.

Naturally, it’s a very welcome market development for Montour’s company, which employs 50 people at its state-of-the-art, 40,000-square-foot facility to produce over 2.5 million kilograms of spiced blends product per year from over 300 tasty recipes.

Included in that extensive product portfolio, Montour turns out over 800,000 liters of high-quality grilling sauces, marinades and broths per year for retail customers across Ontario, Quebec and the Atlantic provinces, relates Montour.

He explains that the company began offering grilling sauces and marinades in 2002 and broths in 2012 but only became involved in the actual manufacturing of its product fairly recently—following its 2001 move to the current Blainville location, which has undergone several expansions in the past five years to add a warehousing facility, a spice packaging room, a new laboratory, and a complete kitchen facility for producing the sauces and broths.

“Up until our most recent expansion, when we added a production line, we did not actually manufacture our own sauces,” Montour told Canadian Packaging in a recent interview.

Third Wheel

“Prior to that, we provided our recipes to a third-party manufacturer who mixed and bottled our products for us,” says Montour, adding that the sudden boom in the prepared-meals segment of the industry prompted the company to rethink the way it went about its business—ultimately deciding to take a much more direct hands-on approach to the manufacturing and packaging of its products.

According to Montour, about 90 per cent of the company’s sauce production output is supplied to grocery store meat departments operated by the company’s high-profile customers such as Sobeys Inc. and Metro Inc. supermarket chains, where it’s used to prepare various ready-to-cook and ready-to-eat meat and fish products. As well, Montour supplies customers in the process meat industry, like Olymel L.P.

The remainder of Montour’s sauce production is allocated for the manufacturing of the company’s own flagship Lebon retail brand of high-end sauce products, which are scheduled to hit the Sobeys and Metro’s supermarket shelves in coming months, Montour relates.

A close-up of the Accurofill piston filler Montour uses to dispense precise amounts of sauce and marinade products into 1.89-liter jugs used by its grocery retail customers to prepare ready-to-eat and ready-to-cook meals on the store premises.

Retailing in highly decorative 350-ml plastic bottles, the Lebon brand launch will be carefully phased-in starting with a pending debut of the Authentic and Red Wine broths for fondue cooking, along with the Honey and Garlic, Dijon, Shanghai, Souvlaki, Three-peppers, and Chicken and Ribs grilling sauces and marinades.

Montour says he’s very pleased with the strategic steps the company has taken to become a fully-integrated business enterprise, with firmer control of its own destiny via pride of ownership that comes only with manufacturing your own creations for the consumer public.

“Nowadays we do not provide any third-party manufacturing services nor do we utilize any for ourselves,” Montour enthuses.

“All the sauces made at Montour are developed by our own R&D department, and all the seasoning bases are also blended in our facility.”

The Blainville plant currently operates two production shifts and one cleaning shift in its spice department, and a single production shift and cleaning shift for its sauces, according to Montour, who says the plant has both the capacity and flexibility to quickly add a second shift if the consumer response to the new products warrant it.

Which may well be a foregone conclusion, given the company’s robust business growth over the past decade to build up a diversified grocery store customer base across all of eastern Canada that cushions it from any major seasonal production peaks and valleys.

“And soon enough, we shall be expanding our products into central and western Canada as well,” says Montour, citing enthusiastic marketplace response and feedback to the company’s diverse product portfolio.

“Over the past three years, we have seen business for our delicious sauces and broths double—and with the addition of our new bottling line, we foresee an 80-percent increase as we expand into more and more markets.”

Open 1.89-liter jugs of Montour sauces pass through an IQ³ model metal detector for Loma Systems for their final quality assurance check prior to capping further downstream the Capmatic bottling line.

Our House

According to Montour, having inhouse manufacturing capabilities has enabled the plant to respond to changing market needs much faster than it was ever possible with its former co-packing business partners.

“We utilized their service a fair bit during the summer months,” he recalls.

“But when our customers in the grocery store business started wanting more sauces from us during the winter months, we knew we would have to do something drastic,” says Montour, explaining that the plant’s new state-of-the-art bottling line—installed as part of a comprehensive $3.5-million facility expansion completed in April of this year—was designed specifically to facilitate such agile manufacturing flexibility, while also enabling the company to launch its own product brand in a fast-growing segment of the food market.

The LabelStar 2/1T single-head labeler from Capmatic neatly applies adhesives labels to the front of 1.89-liter jugs at throughput speeds of up to 24 containers per minute.

Installed as a turnkey system by renowned Montreal-headquartered packaging machinery OME (original equipment manufacturer) Capmatic Ltd., the new bottling line has done wonders for the company’s manufacturing and packaging competence, according to Montour, who says he was initially attracted to Capmatic based on the manufacturer’s well-earned reputation for an extensive product range of top-quality unscrambling, filling, capping and labeling equipment that can work with a wide range of bottles, jars and jugs in a multitude of shapes and sizes.

“One of our big desires was to present a better-packaged product to our grocery store customers,” explains Montour, relating that the sheer weight of the bulky four-liter jug previously used to ship the sauces was not very easy to handle by the stores’ deli and department staff, weighing about five kilograms (11 pounds) each.

“So in an effort to help our customers out, we decided to create a smaller, 1.89-liter bottle that only weighed approximately 2.3 kilograms (five pounds), and which is also more ergonomic,” Montour relates.

“We also wanted to incorporate a jug handle that would be easier for people to manipulate for easier distribution and handling,” says Montour, asserting that the Capmatic equipment delivers the same high-quality output with the 1.89-liter sauce and the one-liter broth jugs—supplied by DeltaPac Packaging Inc.—as it does with the retail-bound 350-ml bottle supplied by the Montreal-based Ampak Inc., with Berry Plastics Corporation supplying all the bottle cap sizes via its local distributor Roda Packaging Inc. of Laval, Que.

A Markem-Imaje 8018i coder applies lot and best-before information to the product labels before they are applied onto the filled plastic containers.

Cooking Skills

Armed with a new Blentech 2,000-liter cooker and a completely automated Capmatic packaging line, the Blainville plant is more than capable of meeting the current customer demand volumes of 800,000 liters of finished sauces, broths and marinades annually.

“We are now able to produce three batches of 1,800 liters of product in a single eight-hour shift,” Montour marvels.

“The improvement in our production capabilities is really a beautiful thing!”

A BeltStar capping and retorquer system on Montour’s bottling line applies consistently tight, leakproof seals onto the 1.89-liter jugs of sauce shipped to the grocery stores.

The main cog of the Capmatic line installed at Montour is the fully-automatic Accurofill volumetric piston filler that works equally well for liquids, semi-viscous and viscous products for all types of plastic, metal and glass containers using a unique combination of volumetric piston technology and rotary valve control to enable extremely fast and accurate filling rates.

“It’s a very good piece of equipment for us,” comments Montour.

“Although we have only had it for a short while, we are quite impressed with its ability to fill our jugs and bottles in an accurate manner.”

While the Accurofill has not yet tested its filling mettle with the 350-ml retail bottles, Montour reports the machine is able to fill 24 1.89-liter jugs, or just over 30 one-liter jugs, per minute.

A Cognex machine vision system checks and verifies the accurate placement of caps on top of each plastic container moving along the starwheel of the SuperJolly capper.

Other components on the production line include Capmatic’s SortStar—a no-change-part bottle unscrambler that Montour has already discovered to be able to handle a diverse range of plastic bottles.

Incorporating centrifugal disks and adjustable guides, the SortStar is equipped with numeric counters to facilitate mechanical adjustments for easy, repeatable changes.

A robust BeltStar stainless-steel capper and retorquer from Capmatic easily handles a wide range of containers and caps to ensure optimal quality and control with innovative magnetic slip-clutch technology.

“The BeltStar provides an HMI (human-machine interface) viewing of the torque application giving us verification of each bottle or jug that passes through it,” says Montour, complimenting the user-friendliness of Rockwell Automation’s Allen-Bradley PanelView Plus 600 HMI terminal, along with the BeltStar’s optional torque verification and reject features.

The Capmatic SuperJolly single-chuck capper is designed to ensure quick accurate application of a broad range of cap types and sizes onto many different types of containers.

A Capmatic SuperJolly single-chuck capper is used to tighten various cap styles, including the continuous thread (CT) caps, child-resistant (CR) caps, and roll-on pilfer-proof (ROPP) caps. According to Capmatic, the SuperJolly is interchangeable between screw capping and crimping.

The system employs a Cognex machine vision control camera system to provide quick verification that each tightened cap has been perfectly aligned—quickly rejecting any misaligned or otherwise imperfect caps right off the production line

The line also includes the Orientor—a Capmatic-made orientation device that aligns all the container handles in the same direction prior to the filling process.

Product labels are applied to the Montour jugs via the easy-to-set-up and operate Capmatic LabelStar 2/1T single-head system that accurately applies partial-wrap or full-wrap and panel-wrap labels to a wide variety of container types, making optimal use of stepper motor technology that provides long-term accuracy and eliminates the service requirements inherent with the use of clutches and brakes.

An Enercon induction sealer applies a tough hermetic seal to prevent any product leakage as well as providing tamper evident protection.

Other equipment includes a large special cooling conveyor table and an accumulation table on a heavy-duty stainless steel frame, which can be quickly modified with a variety of options per required accumulation time.

“All of the equipment we purchased from Capmatic has been an eye-opening experience for us,” says Montour. “It is all very easy to operate, which is an important factor for us—being new to the whole packaging line process.”

A Markem-Imaje 8018i intermittent thermal-transfer printer applies lot number and best-before information to the adhesive labels before application by the LabelStar.

Other systems added to the line by Montour include a Loma Systems IQ³ metal detection system—said to provide the ‘industry first’ true variable frequency operation that automatically sets up for peak performance in seconds—and an induction sealer from Enercon Industries Corp., which creates tough hermetic seals to prevents containers from leaking to preserve the freshness of the contents as well as provide a helpful tamper-evidence feature.

“Maintaining a quality product is extremely important for us,” asserts Montour. “It’s why, along with working in a HACCP (Hazard Analysis and Critical Control Points)-certified, CFIA (Canadian Food Inspection Agency)-inspected facility that undergoes third-party audits, we wanted to install packaging equipment that would maintain that sense of safety we demand for our customers.”

According to Montour, the key consideration behind the new line was making sure that the quality of the equipment matched the quality of the company’s high-end products, which are made using professionally-developed formulations that meet such targets as having low-sodium levels, as well as products with no artificial flavors, colors or preservatives.

“Our filling and capping systems on our production line are very important to us in providing a clean-looking visual appearance,” notes Montour. “If you see a dirty, sticky label on a product, it could mean that there is a leak in a container, and that is something we will not tolerate.”

Lab employees formulating new spice blend recipes at Montour plant’s new research and development facilities.

The growth of the company, according to Montour, is derived from its ability to provide innovative product development, the introduction of new products to the existing customer base, and greater availability of higher-quality plastic containers.

“We feel that by manufacturing our own sauces and broths—thanks to our new Capmatic production line—we can better ensure product safety and quality from the start of the production through to it being shipped out the door of our facility,” states Montour.

“The bottom line is that we have better control over own products,” says Montour, while admitting to some initial apprehensions at first.

“But we all realized that in order for this company to grow, we had to take this next leap of faith in our abilities,” he sums up, “because it is the best way to distinguish ourselves in this very competitive market.

“By taking on that responsibility ourselves and by caring about the people who handle our products, we show that we are a company willing to take on all challenges in our quest to grow and be a leader in our industry.”

In fact, having fun while working almost seems to be something of a required skill at the lively coffee roasting and packaging operation housed in a spotless, 20,000-square-foot coffee facility owned and operated by the hardworking Muldoon brothers, Jimmy and Shaun, who claim to be at the forefront of a profound evolution in the way Toronto-area office workers get their daily coffee fix.

Working with the Toronto-based integrator Abbey Packaging, Muldoon’s Own purchased and installed a new Italian-crafted OPEM Kikka vertical form/fill/seal machine to manufacture its new single-serve coffee pods.

“Our mantra is simple: we buy great green coffee beans, we roast it slow, and sell it fast to commercial businesses who provide coffee for their employees,” Jimmy Muldoon told Canadian Packaging on a recent visit to the 50-employee operation—including 10 Muldoon family members—serving a steadily growing customer base currently comprising over 1,500 commercial enterprises in the GTA (Greater Toronto Area) region.

Despite the relative abundance of long-established coffee-shop operators and coffee product and equipment suppliers in the metropolitan Toronto area, Muldoon says that the company has managed to carve out and nurture an important marketplace niche by deliberately targeting busy, high-density office complexes where getting a good cup of coffee is just not as quick or easy as Muldoon insists it should be, which he says can actually have a negative impact on workplace productivity and morale.

“Our coffee and equipment will increase an office’s productivity by keeping the employees in the office longer.”

Muldoon explains: “I know it sounds like a mad thing for a Scotsman to do, but we will provide our coffee and equipment free of charge for a week for a potential customer to prove exactly how office productivity can be increased simply by not losing employees going out for an extended break to find a decent cup of coffee.”

Roasting and processing approximately 400,000 pounds of coffee per year, Muldoon’s Own markets 10 different products under its own brand name, including fair-trade Flying Scotsman, Highland Blend and Columbian Supremo; the Costa Rican Tarrazu; Donut Shop and Breakfast blends; the West Coast Signature, Guatemalan Rainforest Alliance and Mocha Java; and a fair-trade Swiss Water decaf recipe.

Family Ties
The company also stocks over 500 auxiliary items such as coffee cups, lids, stir sticks, dairy powders, etc., according to Muldoon, whose family ties to the coffee business stretch both far and wide.

“The Muldoons clan first started a family business in Glasgow, Scotland, in 1971 under the name Carefree Vending, which was a fully-automated services provider supplying a host of vending machines offering snacks and tobacco products,” he recalls.

Ellis Packaging created a paperboard box to hold 16 foil single-serve coffee pod pouches of Muldoon’s Own coffee brand.

While the vending business did very well for many years, a severe economic recession in the U.K during the 1980s eventually drove the family to close the shop and, ultimately, move to Toronto in search of greener pastures.

“By 1991, Carefree Vending was back in operation in its new home based in nearby Brampton, Ontario, and through hard work and great service, we began to grow again.

“Although we did not roast or grind the coffee beans ourselves at the time, we managed to land a large corporate client for our services, which really helped us grow the business,” he relates.

Inevitably, the Muldoons came to a realization that the best way to being able to guarantee the quality and freshness of the product for its clients was to take matters into their own hands and start roasting the coffee beans themselves.

Installed onto the OPEM Kikka packaging machine, a Videojet Technologies printer applies lot, code and brand information onto individual film pouches containing the single-serve coffee pods.

“We started roasting and packaging our own coffees in 1998 and changed the company name to its current moniker to better reflect who we are,” recalls Shaun Muldoon, saying the company has since built up a fair bit of respect within the foodservice industry for elegant packaging that accurately reflected its commitment to high product quality, top customer service, and continuous innovation.

Adds Jimmy Muldoon: “We believe that packaging is, in fact, the ambassador of our products, and as such it must appear and perform to suit the needs of the product and the client.

“It is no secret that packaging sells the product,” he says, “but we believe it is the quality and innovation of that package which helps to keep it selling over time.”

This ongoing quest for innovation has recently enabled the company to launch its own brand of a single-serve coffee pod, which it developed in collaboration with some like-minded innovative Canadian packaging suppliers.

Resembling a slightly thicker round tea-bag, the easy-open single-serve pack—called the Pod or Muldoon’s Single—contains 12 grams of high-quality coffee that produces a perfect cup of coffee in only 30 seconds of brewing time.

Intentionally designed to look like a soft pod—rather than the hard-pod packs commonly found in European markets—each of the Pod portion-packs is elegantly embossed with the family name, Shaun Muldoon explains, to reflect the company’s pride in its creation.

“Our main focus was to create a single-serve solution for a North American audience, but it was also key that it had to properly brew 12 grams of fresh, quality coffee,” adds Jimmy Muldoon.

Greener Choice
While the Muldoon brothers readily acknowledge that their new pods are not likely to pose immediate threat to the current single-serve market dominance in North America enjoyed by the Kuerig coffeemakers and its K-Cup single-serve packages, they insist that their single-serve solution provides its clients with a much more eco-friendly alternative.

By virtue of doing business with many top-tier corporations with sound understanding and awareness of key environmental sustainability issues, Muldoon’s Own has met with many of their clients’ ‘green teams’ over the years to address their respective environmental concerns with a befitting solution.

The Muldoon’s Own OPEM Kikka coffee pod-forming machine uses filter paper manufactured by the Glatfelter company.

“At the outset, these needs were largely met with our certified Fair Trade and Rainforest coffee products,” relates Shaun Muldoon, “but we always knew we had to find a solution to the plastic cartridge issue, which is a key detrimental factor in that respect for the single-serve coffee makers.

“And that is exactly what we did,” he says, pointing out that the company’s pod is made with specialty, fully-biodegradable coffee filter paper—manufactured in England by the Glatfelter company—designed with a special weave to withstand the pressure of the pod brewing process.

In addition, the pod’s tearaway outer foil package is produced with specialty film, developed by the Mississauga-based Chantler Packaging Inc., that helps reduce the product’s environmental footprint.

“The Chantler film contains 66-percent EPI—the best currently available, by the way—that lessens the impact on the environment while still protecting the coffee grounds against light and air,” says Jimmy Muldoon, adding his company has relied on Chantler for many years as a supplier of its fractional packs for thermal brewers and the fresh-cup films that house the large whole bean bags.

While Jimmy Muldoon estimates that the Mississauga plant is currently running at about 70 per cent of its capacity, “we will be roasting much more once we get into full production with our new, innovative single-serve coffee pods.”

In addition to making the 12-gram Flying Scotsman and Rainforce Alliance pods, the company is also planning to launch another six SKUs in 10-gram pods, with only the Mocha Java and Breakfast coffees not being converted to pod format, at least for time being.

Noting that it already has 150 customers utilizing single-serve pods manufactured by other coffee suppliers, Jimmy Muldoon expects a fairly easy switchover.

“We don’t want to slag the competition, but our new pod-making machine, combined with our own freshly ground estate coffee and specially-tuned coffee machines, provide a superior coffee upgrade that will be offered to all of our customers,” he says.

“We have multiple large clients who know we are currently in Pod production, and they intend to change all of their locations to our pods when we are ready.

“Everyone seems excited by our new pods,” he says, adding that the new Pods will be shipped to customers in elegant, well-designed paperboxes made by the Pickering, Ont.-based Ellis Packaging Limited, which can hold 16 12-gram Pods or 18 10-gram Pods per box.

Home Stretch
“Sorry to sound like Don Cherry, but Ellis Packaging is a good Canadian family-run business that is great to work with,” says Shaun Muldoon, noting that Muldon’s Own takes great pride in building its business via Canadian suppliers—from the broker used to source the coffee beans up to the brewing system that delivers the coffee to the customers.

This Canadian preference also applies to KruPack, a business unit of the Brampton, Ont.-based Kruger Inc., which manufactures the large master cases holding six of the Ellis cartons—adding an extra layer of protection during transport, while still providing colorful branding graphics on the exterior of the cases.

A Festo semi-rotary 0-180 degree air cylinder mounted to the bottom of an auger filler on the OPEM Kikka tamps and twists to release the coffee grounds for even dispensing of the product onto the pod’s filter paper.

The Muldoon brothers were keen to point out that along with utilizing the best coffee beans, the choice of equipment and packaging are key ingredients in the continued success of the company.

“From our key Samiac roaster that is engineered to slow-roast specialty coffees, to our new OPEM pod system that was designed and built to make the best 12-gram freshly-ground, zero-oxygen, easy-opening awesome pod that can be made to date—we just love our equipment,” says Shaun Muldoon.

Equipment utilized at the Muldoon’s Own facility includes:

• a San Franciscan roaster;
• Sasa Samiac roaster;
• Key Pak EL 600 form/fill/seal machine for fractional packs weighing between 2.25-ounces up to one pound;
• a Markem-Imaje Smart Date 3 thermal-transfer printer mounted onto the Key Pak machine;
• a Model GPX coffee bean roller-style grinder from Modern Process Equipment Corporation perched atop the packaging machinery;
• an OPEM Kikka pod-making machine outfitted with a Videojet Technologies printer.

Installed by the Toronto-based packaging line equipment integrators Abbey Packaging, the Muldoon’s new Kikka is a compact, integrated vertical packaging machine designed to manufacture single-serve coffee pods utilizing filter-paper with an individual overwrap.

Abbey Packaging was involved in ensuring Muldoon’s Own not only got the best machine for its needs, but also acting as the sole point-of-contact with OPEM.

“We chose Abbey Packaging because we had been using them to service our Key Pak for the past 10 years, and it just so happens they are also the sole Canadian distributor for OPEM, who we feel manufactures the best coffee-related equipment around.”

Rob McNaught, president of Abbey Packaging, says that while there are other manufacturers of pod equipment available, “OPEM was selected due to its experience in the single-serve market, ability to provide local support, and advanced features such as inline grinding, a servo auger filler for accurate dosing, pre-forming and tamping for consistent brewing, and integrated form/fill/seal machine design with gas flush to guarantee shelflife quality.”

Shaun Muldoon is quick to compliment Abbey Packaging’s service manager Derek Wood and lead service technician Rik Vernhout for all their professional assistance with the project.

“I would say that both of those gentlemen were excellent in every aspect of the process, from how they handled OPEM in Italy to the actual install in our plant, which only took about a week.”

The Muldoon single-serve coffee Pod is packed in pouches manufactured with specialty film developed by Chantler Packaging.

Daily Grind
According to Wood, the OPEM machine works by having the ground coffee beans pass through a servo auger filler system onto a pre-formed pod bottom.

After passing a tamping station to form the pod’s circular shape, the top part of the filter paper is placed atop the pod, automatically embossed with the Muldoon’s logo and heat-sealed together.

The filled paper pod is then die-cut to shape, after which a robotic arm removes it from the forming chain to be individually wrapped in a plastic film flushed with Nitrogen gas to keep it fresh.

“I really like what Muldoon’s Own is doing,” says Wood. “In Europe, the pod market has always been considered an economical, low-cost solution, but also a low-cost, inferior product.

“But with the new market and attitudes here in North America, Muldoon’s Own has sought to remake the pod’s image into one of quality, while still maintaining an attractive cost-point.”

Both Muldoon brothers says they are ecstatic about the results achieved with their new OPEM pod machine to date, and are excited to be running it at top speeds soon.

While Shaun Muldoon admits that there are quite a few competitors out there in the office coffee business, what sets Muldoon’s Own apart is that it actually roasts its own coffee, instead of being a mere middle-man.

“We are not a courier-style provider of coffee who just drops off the coffee—our service level is at another tier,” says Shaun Muldoon. “From our well-trained, long-term staff, to the full customer care we provide, to the clean uniforms of our CSRs (customer service representatives), customer service is not an added service—it’s just a part of who we are.

“Our corporate arena is an area where service, quality and innovation is awarded with long-term support,” Shaun sums up. “To be honest, in the foodservice sector, the only thing on their wish list is price and free equipment.

“Of course we give them this, but we also provide the best service in the city and a superior blend of coffee, which is now also available in a single-serve, eco-responsible coffee pod.”

“We are an innovative manufacturer of fruit- and sugar-based filling products with a comprehensive line of recipes that will make any mouth water in delight,” Fruition plant manager Roland Love told Canadian Packaging on a recent visit to a busy, state-of-the-art, 30,000-square-foot facility—located about a 40-minute drive west of Toronto—operating under some of the food industry’s highest standards for product quality and safety, along with plant sanitation and hygiene.

Fruition manufactures and packages fruit-based fillings for baked goods customers.

Faithfully adhering to the AIB (American Institute of Baking)’s consolidated standards guidelines, the HACCP (Hazard Analysis and Critical Control Points)-certified facility also boasts kosher certification, Love points out, with the building’s 10,000-square-foot production and packaging area operating in a strictly-observed ‘nut-free’ production environment.

Custom Service
Being a key supplier of custom-made fillings to one of Canada’s largest national fast-food restaurant operators—boasting a popular and wide-ranging daily selection of freshly-made doughnuts—requires the Fruition plant to maintain a fast-paced production schedule, according to Love, to meet demanding production deadlines.

“We are a really busy company because we are involved in what is a very quick-turnaround business,” says Love, explaining the plant’s 24-hours-a-day, five-days-a-week, three-shift operation, including all required sanitation procedures.

Says Love: “We supply our main customer with fills—including raspberry, two types of strawberry, blueberry, caramel, lemon, cherry, chocolate, cinnamon, glaze, Venetian Boston Cream and a beverage base—we do so for their quick-service shops right across Canada.”

As the company’s production requirements and volumes grew over the years, Love relates, so did the need to automate many of the secondary packaging processes previously performed manually—for both safety and productivity reasons.

Integrated by MD Packaging, Fruition’s automated packaging line utilizes ABB’s IRB 360 FlexPicker delta robotic system outfitted with a Cognex machine vision system to quickly pick up and place two-kilogram plastic pouches of fruit fillings into cartons below at high speeds.

While the actual filling of the product into high-barrier plastic pouching was always expertly handled by the plant’s two highly-automated, hardworking Cryovac vertical flexible bag fillers manufactured by Sealed Air Corporation—the downstream manual handling of the two-kilogram, hot-to-touch pouches rapidly coming out of the fillers had some of the line’s production personnel handling as much as 1,000 kilograms of product per shift, Love recalls.

“We knew we had to automate eventually,” says Love, adding that the plant also needed to boost its productivity in order to remain a cost-competitive, flexible manufacturing operation.

“The whole packaging line was a very labor-intensive job area,” he recalls, noting that the packaging line’s cramped 5,000-square-foot floorspace presented a significant challenge for a sudden massive influx of automated equipment.

Or so it seemed, until Love contacted packaging equipment distributors and line integrators MD Packaging Inc. of Markham, Ont., in May of 2010, while looking to replace an existing, worn-out case-packing system.

After taking a close look at Fruition’s packaging line, MD Packaging suggested a number of ways it could obtain significant productivity improvements by automating its entire end-of-line packaging operations with one fully-integrated, turnkey line that would fit within the tight footprint.

Employing Wexxar’s WF30 case erector, the packaging line at Fruition came together as a joint project of JLS Automation and MD Packaging to help Fruition optimize the production line efficiency at the company’s Oakville plant.

“Being a really busy company, we are always appreciative when someone offers suggestions on how we could create efficiencies while being progressive,” Love relates, adding that he was very impressed with the new packaging line proposal put forth by MD Packaging sales and service representative Jaime Alboim.

“The main concern we always had about automating this part of our operations was the fact that we really have a very small amount of available floorspace,” Love recalls.

“But Jaime did a good job of convincing me that MD Packaging would provide us with the equipment we needed, and to fit it within the 5,000-square-foot confines.

“And in the end, they were true to their word,” says Love, complimenting Alboim for overseeing a smooth execution of the entire project—from conceptual design to equipment installation and startup—by December of 2011.

“The way this whole new automated line came together actually took us pleasantly by surprise,” he states. “It was a great way for us to forge a new partnership.”

Working on the project in partnership with York, Pa.-based packaging machinery supplier and integrator JLS Automation enabled MD Packaging to complete the entire project to full customer satisfaction, according to Alboim, while meeting all the pertinent Ontario occupational health-and-safety requirements.

“Given the space constraints we had to work with and the complexity of the automation required, this whole line fits into what MD Packaging and JLS call their ‘customer-centric’ approach to business,” says Alboim, relating that every detail and each step of the project was carefully thought out and discussed with Fruition to ensure everybody was on the same page at all times.

“There are always a few unexpected hiccups in any project, but working with Fruition was a truly great experience because we really worked as partners,” Alboim confides.

Part of Fruition’s end-of-line packaging solution, an ABB palletizing robot neatly stacks product cases pre-programmed layer pattern.

Walk Away
“We always want to walk away from a project knowing that we did everything we could—from design to startup—to live up to both the customers’ and our own expectations,” he reflects.

According to Alboim, MD Packaging supplied about 80 per cent of the equipment required for the line from JLS Automation.

Recalls Alboim: “JLS took the lead on designing and implementation, and MD Packaging took care of the additional 20 per cent of the equipment, while remaining the focal contact with Fruition throughout the entire project.”

The equipment MD Packaging sold and installed on the line includes:

• two M-Series plus print-and-apply labelers from Domino Printing Solutions;
• a Wexxar Packaging WF30 case erector with an extended infeed and stainless steel enviroguard package;
• a Wexxar Belcor 250SS case-sealer;
• two Mettler-Toledo High-Speed Beltweigh XS Combi checkweighers, used to verify the weight of filled bags coming out of the Cryovac fillers;
• one Mettler-Toledo S3600XE checkweigher combined with a Cognex vision system, used to verify barcodes and the presence of a label.

The Cognex vision system changes the parameters in the case weight on-the-fly, with product information ensuring that not only the appropriate weight settings are used for different case weights, but that all statistics are also captured for the individual product SKUs (stock-keeping units).

In addition to all of this data, the case-weigher also checks for open minor and major flaps through special software that Mettler-Toledo developed along with an array of product sensors. All of this captured data is sent to a central reject system if anything is off.

Alboim believes that this particular system is very unique in the market, and something that sets Mettler-Toledo High Speed apart from other inspection equipment manufacturers.

Heavy-duty SEW-Eurodrive motors power the conveyor belts used for smooth transport of Fruition’s product through all the packaging line stages.

“Those are all lines that we (MD Packaging) sell and support locally, so it made sense to use our locally-trained technicians to do that,” says Alboim, adding that MD Packaging also provides full local after-sales support, including replacement parts and  preventative maintenance service.

Metal Heads
MD Packaging also redeployed two existing Thermo Scientific APEX 500 metal detection units Fruition had been using as stand-alone systems, mounting them onto the two Beltweigh XS checkweighers to help save on the line’s floorspace.

Equipment supplied by JLS Packaging through MD Packaging and installed by JLS includes: a dual JLS Osprey case-packing cell with two ABB model IRB 360 FlexPicker second-generation delta robots, which pick up individual pouches of Fruition’s filling and place them at high speeds into cases.

Featuring Rockwell Automation’s Allen-Bradley PanelView 1000 HMI (human-machine interface) all the vision, material handling and  transferring equipment, this line also boasts a fully-automatic palletizing cell, comprising an automatic pallet dispenser, a Lantech automatic stretchwrapper, and an ABB model IRB 660 palletizing robot with a PanelView 1000 HMI terminal.

Alboim says the JLS Osprey case-packing cells utilize vision-based technology for tracking of both the product and the cases—allowing for very fast changeover and agility by bypassing the need for mechanical flights or accumulation for picking.

“We can effectively increase efficiency on the cells by picking on angles in random positions and loading dynamically through the index,” Alboim explains.

Working with one of their other strategic partners, JLS also supplied the conveyance lines that join all of the equipment together.

A Mettler Toledo Hi-Speed checkweigher ensures proper weight of each pouch of fruit filling.

The conveyors are powered by strategically positioned SEW-Eurodrive motors to ensure even transfer along the packaging line.

Says Alboim: “Each conveyor is controlled and synched to the PLC (programmable logic controller) independently, and each has its own VFD (variable frequency drive) so that we can tweak the infeed discharge to create gaps between the pouches on the conveyor, and adjust performance accordingly.”

The entire line was also built with stainless-steel conduit to facilitate easy assembly and for sanitary purposes.

While Love thinks that JLS and MD Packaging did a great job on the packaging line, he also gives praise to Falls Electric of Niagara Falls, Ont., which “did a lot of wiring in our facility for the line to operate properly—and did so quickly and effectively.”

The Osprey case-packers were the first part of the line to be installed—quickly followed by the palletizing side—but Love says that the whole project was all about collaboration.

“We believe that collaboration is the cornerstone to any successful implementation, and we did not want to compromise that feeling.”

Alboim agrees: “For us, Fruition represents over a year of collaboration prior to purchase in trying to understand their requirements—both existing and future—and designing a system agile enough to accommodate both.”

Busy Year
While every step in the project created its own challenges, Fruition worked well with both MD and JLS to resolve issues without compromising the initial intention of MD Packaging, which was to provide an automated line that would take Fruition further than expected in production capabilities for years to come.

And so far, it has worked.

Domino’s M-Series Plus print-and-apply system attaching product labels to the panel of each Fruition shipping carton.

Love notes that while the filling speed remains the same, along with saving line workers some serious lifting, Fruition has seen the same jobs completed in eight hours, compared to 10 with the manual packing.

“We created a safer work environment, but we also have increased our throughput, meaning we can now handle larger orders from our customer base, which they are taking advantage of,” states Love.

Love also credited his employees for their dedication to performing at a high level to make the switch to an automated packaging line virtually seamless.

A Festo servomotor incorporated into the design of Wexxar’s WF 30 case erector installed on the new packaging line.

Alboim agrees: “The people at Fruition are among the most dedicated I’ve seen—always rising to the task and always willing to do what it takes to get the job done.

“Introducing automation like this into a facility takes a great deal of willingness from people to dive in and help when it’s needed, and the people of Fruition made the transition very easy.”

A Wexxar Belcor 250SS case sealer uses an adhesive tape to close cartons of Fruition product.

Adds Love: “I think it helps a great deal that Fruition has a very engaged staff of people committed to quality, which is important not only to us, but also to them because everyone eats the product as consumers.

We know that if we continue to put out a safe, quality product, we will continue our impressive growth well into the future,” Love sums up.

“Our new packaging line from MD and JLS has been a great addition to our already existing high company ideals.”

And embrace it they did—warmly enough to enable Szaky to incorporate his fledgling student-run operation into TerraCycle, Inc.—today a thriving, globally-operating company leading the way in collecting many types of hard-to-recycle packaging products and turning them into new innovative, affordable consumer goods while offering a brilliant end-of-life packaging solution for millions of tonnes of used packaging headed for landfills.

Founded in 2001 as part of a business plan for a Princeton University student contest, TerraCycle’s beginnings were as humble as one would expect, with Szaky and fellow student Jon Beyer manually collecting waste from the school’s dining hall, processing it into the so-called ‘Worm Gin’ to feed their worms, and turning the worm poop into a fertilizer mix that they packed into discarded beverage containers.

The experience laid foundations for a strong recycling culture that has paid off big-time for TerraCycle over the past decade.

In fact, it almost paid off handsomely in 2003 when TerraCycle won a US$1-million top prize in a local contest looking for a best business plan for an upstart venture.

However, after hearing about the proposed business plans that the contest’s main sponsor had in mind for his company, Szaky refused to collect the cash in order to retain full control of TerraCycle.

It proved to be a worthwhile gamble, as within a few years the company already had the likes of Walmart Canada, Home Depot, Whole Foods Market and other retail chains among its customers—enabling the company to operate on solid financial footing, while sticking to its core values of helping the modern consumer society to minimize its ultimately unsustainable packaging footprint.

By 2007, TerraCycle took its waste reduction to a whole new level after being approached by Honest Tea to see if TerraCycle could do something with their Honest Kids fruit beverage brand’s PET (polyethylene terephthalate) pouches.

After figuring out a cost-effective way to sew the empty pouches together, TerraCycle began ‘upcycling them into colorful pencil cases for school kids.

Before long, the company began collecting and sorting all sorts of other consumer packaging waste that could be upcycled into useful new products.

To secure adequate supply of discarded flexible packaging, TerraCycle partnered up with schools and other public institutions to collect the waste and sell it to TerraCycle, who would then have third-party manufacturers make colorful new products bearing the original brand’s signature banners, icons, logos, graphics, etc.

The beauty of the whole virtuous circle is that absolutely none of the collected pouches and other flexi-packs ever come near a landfill, according to TerraCycle Canada’s director of communications Denise Barnard, while brand-owners have a great opportunity to make a valid and credible statement about their sense of environmental responsibility.

‘It’s all about taking waste products and using them to create new upcycled and recycled products that feature the original brand, which in turn provides the [brand-owner] partner company with great recognition,” Barnard told Canadian Packaging in a recent interview.

“And because of the significantly lower material costs, TerraCycle can have these new eco-friendly products manufactured without charging much of a premium,” says Barnard, citing an extensive list of stylish-looking upcycled products such as binders, pencil cases, folders, lunchboxes, backpacks, tote bags, faux jewelry, potting supplies, bird-feeders, trash cans and recycling bins. (See Pictures)

Global Appeal
Naturally, many leading multinational brand-owners and retailers were quick to seize on the idea—not only in North America, but also in the U.K., Argentina, Mexico, Germany, Brazil, France, Sweden, The Netherlands, Denmark, Norway, Belgium, Luxembourg, Switzerland and Spain.

In Canada, the company is currently working with over 20 major brands—including Nestlé, Kool-Aid, Mr. Christie’s, Huggies, Sally’s, Schneiders, Garnier, Old Navy and Sharpie—to collect their used packaging that would otherwise end up in a landfill.

“About 95 per cent of all the waste we receive is recycled, with five per cent upcycled into new products,” says Barnard.

Most of the waste in Canada is collected via TerraCycle-operated Brigade programs, Barnard explains, which involves about 800,000 people across Canada, with elementary school children accounting for about 70 per cent of that total.

All the collected waste—along with any additional pre-consumer waste, such as overruns from its business partners—is sent directly to the company’s New Jersey facility, where it is separated, sorted and shipped to local third-party manufacturers for upcycling.

Barnard says the company currently operates 22 Brigade programs across Canada, with several new ones launched so far this year:  Old Navy Flip-Flop Brigade; Cigarette Waste Brigade; Staples Brigade (in-store collection of used writing instruments); Schneiders Lunchmate Brigade; and the London Drugs Brigade.

Launched last month across London Drugs Limited’s 76 stores in western Canada, the London Drugs Brigade encourages shoppers to drop off their used beauty packaging and chocolate wrappers at collection boxes in London Drugs stores, with the retailer donating $0.02 per each collected package to the Canadian Cancer Society and shipping them on to TerraCycle.

Says Barnard: “As of the end of August, TerraCycle Canada has helped divert 54,995 kilograms (121, 244 pounds) of packaging waste from landfills in Canada by literally creating new life for old packaging, and we are really just getting started.”

Photographs courtesy of TerraCycle Canada, ULC.

Widely acknowledged as a viable meat substitute in many popular North American-style dishes, tofu has long overcome its early consumer perception problem in North America as being a bland and tasteless filler food, according to Jess Abramson, vice-president of sales and marketing at the fast-growing soy processor Sol Cuisine Inc. in Mississauga, Ont.

Sol Cuisine vice-president of sales and marketing Jess Abramson shows off some of the tofu and soy-based products processed at the company’s Mississauga facility.

“That perception certainly is not correct at all,” Abramson asserts. “Be it soft or firm, raw or cooked, tofu definitely has its own taste, smell and texture—with large differences in each of these properties dictated both by the particular soy bean used to make it and the manner in which the tofu is made.”

By any measure, it is made in a very fine manner indeed at the company’s 11,500-square-foot production facility located about a 30-minute drive west of Toronto, which employs 20 people to turn out a growing range of organic, wheat-free and gluten-free Halal- and Kosher-certified vegetarian burgers and breakfast patties.

According to Abramson, the plant has capacity to make 7.5 million veggie burgers per year, along with 4.5 million units of vacuum-sealed firm tofu blocks that can be used as a main protein ingredient across a wide variety of modern recipes traditionally relying on meat—amounting to nearly two million pounds of product combined.

“We really are tofu-obsessed,” Abramson told Canadian Packaging during a recent visit to the neat-and-tidy, HACCP (Hazard Analysis And Critical Control Points)-certified Mississauga facility, relating the company’s origins tracing back to 1980.

Originally called Soy City Foods, the company started out trying to fill an existing void in the Toronto vegetarian restaurant business landscape created by the absence of a reliable supplier of fresh high-quality tofu, relates Abramson, soon after expanding into the foodservice industry and, eventually, the retail sector.

In 2002, Soy City joined forces with Second Nature—a Toronto-based veggie burger producer primarily supplying high-school cafeterias in and around the city—to form the aptly-called Sol Cuisine.

A Nordale cartoner assembles the paperboard cartons, supplied by Cascades, used for packaging Sol’s meatless burgers for retail sale.

“Sol is the Spanish word for ‘Sun,’ but we also hold it to stand for ‘Sustainable,’ ‘Organic’ and ‘Local’—the three core values that have guided us for over 30 years,” says Abramson, claiming the company to be the first Canadian manufacturer of organic tofu—sourcing its whole soybeans from a farm in Ripley, Ont.

“Working with this farm helps ensure our continuous access to the precious, organic, Non-GMO (genetically-modified organisms) soybeans, which are farmed sustainably and purchased for a fair price,” explains Abramson.

“Because of our colder climate, Ontario-grown soybeans actually contain a higher protein content and hence are considered to be among the best in the world,” says Abramson, adding that offering a largely gluten-free soy product to the vegetarian food market—along with appealing texture and taste profile—has enabled the company to cultivate a strong brand loyalty among its main customers and consumers.

“Even when it came to healthy options, in years past most of the veggie-based manufactured products out there utilized gluten as a binding agent, but about 90 per cent of the Sol Cuisine product line is gluten-free,” states Abramson, adding the company recently had its retail products certified both wheat- and gluten-free through the Celiac Sprue Association.

Sol Cuisine utilizes a Doboy Stratus flowwrapper, manufactured by Bosch Packaging Technology, to make its burger retail packs.

According to Abramson, growing consumer awareness of health issues, along with increasing popularity of vegetarianism and consumption of organic foods, have also made a significant contribution to the company’s rapid growth over the last decade.

Under the leadership of company president Dror Balshine, the company managed to post double-digit annual sales growth over the past decade in large part to continuous product innovation—as reflected by 13 different SKUs (stock-keeping units) retailed across Canada by a growing base of natural-food, co-op and independent grocery stores, as well as leading supermarket chains including Loblaws, Sobey’s, Metro, Superstore, Whole Foods, Safeway and Overwaitea Foods.

Since the summer of 2011, the company has also made some important inroads to the U.S. marketplace, where leading organic foods retailer Whole Foods Market now carries its top-selling line of veggie burgers—in about 40 different states, according to Abramson.

All burgers processed at the Sol Cuisine plant pass through the IQ2 metal detector from Loma Systems to ensure strict quality control.

“Despite our success in Canada, we wanted to grow by seeing if there was a market for us in the U.S.,” Abramson recalls. “But because there were already so many veggie product choices on the market, as an unknown brand we needed to pop out.

“Specifically, we needed a way to make our packaging a focal point for our products.”

To achieve that goal, Sol Cuisine turned to the Toronto-based boutique marketing agency the adlib group inc., to develop a new high-end package for the U.S. market that would effectively tell the brand’s story in a novel, eye-catching manner.

“We introduced a color-coding system that definitely created a brighter shelf presence, while allowing easier identification of different SKUs at a glance,” relates Jesse’s father and the adlib group president Michael Abramson, himself a long-time vegetarian and an avid consumer  of Sol Cuisine tofu products for about 10 years.

“The color panel also houses the Sol Cuisine logo and the great nutritional attributes like wheat- and gluten-free and vegan—letting the packaging become both a salesperson and educator at shelf level.”

The raw Tofu packs and the soy-based vegan burger packaging were designed by the adlib group, which also implemented a suggestion from Cascades to make full use of packaging real estate on the side-panels and the inner layer of the box to make a better consumer connection.

Adds the adlib group’s creative director David Brouitt: “We set out to refresh the Sol Cuisine brand to create one that reflected a bright, optimistic, and playful persona.

“Specifically, we recommended that Sol move away from their existing packaging that featured a farm scene background with very little to distinguish one SKU from the next,” Brouitt expands.

“We maintained the sky image from the original farm scene but lightened up the rest of the package so that the photo of the product was more prominent,” he relates, “and we also introduced an identification panel using bold colors to maximize consumer eye-appeal and product differentiation.”

Because good packaging presentation is now an essential ingredient of Sol Cuisine’s marketing strategy, according to Jess Abramson, last year the company turned to one of Canada’s leading recycled paperboard products manufacturers and PAC founding member Cascades Inc.—a switch that has already yielded some improvements in packaging, along with the environmental bonus of using exclusively FSC (Forest Stewardship Council)-certified paperboard for its flagship brand veggie burgers.

Abramson says that the pre-printed paperboxes supplied by the Cascades’ nearby manufacturing operation in Mississauga, Ont., provide a quality freezer-safe packaging substrate that won’t warp under intense cold, while the special color inks used by Cascades ensure a far superior and more consistent color reproduction than the process CMYK inks used on the earlier boxes, which had the colors of the company’s logo noticeably varying from run to run.

Fresh whole GMO-free soybeans are processed into blocks of tofu and quickly packaged inside high-barrier plastic on the Multivac model M855 gas-flush thermoforming machine, which uses various grades of packaging films supplied by Winpak, Taipak and Packall.

For foodservice customers like the popular upscale Hero Certified Burgers chain, Sol Cuisine uses Norampac (division of Cascades) converted corrugated cartons to pack 30 burgers—5.5 kilograms of product—to a box.

Says Abramson: “The printing presses used by Cascades allow us to run our small production runs quickly, which has helped us with our often tight deadline… and helping us grow our business.

“We have noticed a 10-percent spike in sales after the introduction of the new packaging here in Canada,” relates Abramson, while complimenting Cascades for making full use of the paperbox packaging’s real estate—including side-flaps and the inner surface—to provide consumers with recipes, product recommendations  and other company information linked directly to the company’s website.

In fact, the launch of the new burger packaging in the U.S. got such a great response, that Sol Cuisine was sold on bringing the packaging to the Canadian market.

The Sol Cuisine veggie burgers start out at the plant’s Formax 6 patty former manufactured by Provisur Technologies, which shapes the product and slips in  a wax sheet of paper underneath each patty to facilitate easy product separation, after which they are conveyed into a spiral freezer capable of freezing up to 2,000 pounds of product per hour.

Corrugated packaging producer Norampac, a division of Cascades, supplies Sol Cusine with high-quality corrugated shipping cartons for its foodservice industry customers.

The frozen patties are then subjected to a thorough product quality inspection by traveling through the high-accuracy IQ2 metal detection system from Loma Systems, after which they are either hand-packed 30 to a box for foodservice customers—using Cascades-made corrugated cartons—or conveyed on to the Doboy Stratus flowwrapper from Bosch Packaging Technology Inc., which quickly packs the burgers two at a time to produce the inside film package.

Operated via an Allen-Bradley PanelView 300 micro monochrome terminal from Rockwell Automation, an automatic Nordale cartoner then springs into action by building paperboxes from flats to complete the primary packages, which are then marked with the lot number and best-before date by an A320i inkjet printer from Domino Printing Solutions and finally sealed using the Pro Blue adhesive system manufactured by Nordson Corporation.

The finished packages of burgers then move onto a circular holding tray—manufactured by Feed Rite Automation Inc.—where they are packed into the Cascades-made corrugated shipping cartons.

Along with the burgers, Sol Cuisine creates an artisan-like, hand-crafted organic tofu product, a fact that when the adlib group looked at, they realized they needed to tell that story with a newly designed package.

“To achieve that, we recommended a sleek black package that called out Sol’s unique product features, while also including a clear window in the plastic film so the consumers can easily see the actual real product for themselves,” says Michael Abramson. “This package helped Sol Cuisine make a great splash into the Canadian  market.”

It’s a slightly different packaging process for the firm raw tofu products, whereby pre-cut blocks of tofu are carefully hand-placed into an older-model M855 gas-flush thermoforming machine, manufactured in Germany by Multivac GmbH to remove the air from the square-shaped thermoformed plastic film packs—manufactured with high-quality barrier film supplied by Taipak, Winpak and Packall—and securely vacuum-seal them three at a time.

After moving through the IQ2 metal detection system for a final quality assurance check, the firm tofu packs are then placed into a pasteurization system and heated up to internal temperatures of 75 C to 80 C for about an hour-and-a-half—a process that enhances the shelf-life of the tofu.

A Domino A320i inkjet printer applies best-before and lot code data to Sol Cuisine’s colorful retail cartons of flavorful soy-based vegetarian burgers.

After overnight storage in a cooler, the tofu packs are then hand-packed 12-per-box into the Norampac  cartons for shipment to retail and/or foodservice customers in Canada and the U.S.

“We really have such a mélange of equipment here,” reflects Abramson, “so taking good care of our equipment is always a big priority for us.

“Our oldest piece of equipment is nearly 25 years old,” she notes, “but we also have some pretty cool new equipment as well, such as our Bosch flowwrapper and our Domino printer, to help us get our packaging just right.

“Though it was a big change for us, we are glad that we worked with our suppliers, like the adlib group and Cascades, to discuss our short-term and medium-range goals to see what sort of impact different packaging could have on our growing business,” sums up Abramson.

“At the end of the day, not only did we learn how our new packaging look in the U.S. market would help us grab the consumers there, we also realized that Sol Cuisine could benefit from a packaging facelift here in Canada, and we have certainly done that.

“Of course,” she concludes, “it also helps a great deal that we can offer such great and innovative vegan cuisine options that actually taste as good as they look.”

And while it has taken a little time and a couple of strategic focus realignments for the Toronto-based microbrewer Amsterdam Brewing Co. Limited to finally make itself an indispensable part of the local craft beer marketplace, the company’s evolution from a tiny brew-pub into one of Ontario’s most prominent premium microbrewers has been well worth the wait, according to the company’s easy-going brewmaster Jamie Mistry, a life-long beer industry insider who joined Amsterdam Brewing four years ago just as it was starting to diversify its core keg business with new product launches of innovative bottled-beer products that quickly caught the imagination and brand loyalty of discerning local beer-lovers.

Decorated with eye-catching graphics designed by Toronto artist Tony Enns, the upscale packaging of Amsterdam Brewing's bottled and canned products is helping fuel double-digit sales growth for the popular Toronto microbrewer.

Dutch Treat

Bottles of the flagship Amsterdam Natural Blonde Lager filled at the Amsterdam Brewing Co. in Toronto.

Time Change

Amsterdam Brewing uses custom-made glass bottles supplied by United Glass that are permanently decorated by Serigraphie Richford via an applied ceramic labeling process to enhance brand image and provide classy aesthetic elegance for the premium beers.

With current annual production capacity of 24,000 hectoliters, a rough equivalent of 300,000 cases of 24 bottles, Amsterdam Brewing currently ranks as one of the top four biggest microbreweries out of the more than 30 craft brewers operating in Ontario, according to Mistry, with only the Mill St. Brewery and Steam Whistle Brewing of Toronto, along with the Waterloo-based Brick Brewing Co., boasting bigger capacity.

Ready-made pallets of six-packs nestled in corrugated trays, supplied by Norampac, await their turn to be shipped out for quick delivery via the company's own mini-fleet of two trucks and three delivery vans.

“Considering there were over 4,000 entries from 75 countries in the competition, with more than 40 entries in the Fruit Beer category, this was definitely a very nice validation of what we do here at Amsterdam Brewing,” Mistry reflects.

Freshly-filled bottles of beer whisked towards the Admark air-knife drying system.

Paper Cut

Bottls travel along a Sidel GEBO conveying system powered by heavy-duty SEW-Eurodrive motors.

The Amsterdam Brewing conveyor lines are outfitted with a broad range of Festo pneumatic automation devices to ensure smooth-running line operation.