When PPM visited the Mamata Machinery stand at K 2022 with southern African representative Paul Clark of Adex Plastics Machinery, the company’s export market manager Dipen Patel was over the moon about the sale of a Vega W800 wicketer an hour earlier. And, he added, that followed another W800 sold on the first day of the show, when a Vega M-series HFFS pouch machine was also ordered. ‘The machines are selling like hotcakes,’ he enthused.

The W800 is designed for easy operation and flexibility at high speed. ‘It produces conventional bread bags and value-added items such as zipper poly bags and square or round bottom bags,’ Dipen explained.

The fully-automated stand-up zipper pouch-maker displayed at the stand occupied the smallest footprint of any machine of its kind at the show, he maintained. ‘Most similar machines here are between nine and 15m long, but ours is only 6.6m.

‘A job can be set up in fewer than 20 minutes and when a changeover to a new job is required, the stations take up position on their own. The machine is made entirely of stainless steel 304 so it’s completely food-safe and compatible with hygiene regulations.’

Dipen explained to PPM that the machine was running a recyclable film – a monolayer PE-laminate from Constantia Flexibles – in line with the way the packaging world is moving. The job, he continued, was a square-bottomed bread bag of the type commonly used in South Africa. ‘We are running 28µm material at 300 cycles/minute.’

In keeping with the European trend to complete automation, operators no longer have to load the chromate or clamp manually, as the machine handles this. ‘We have now gone one step further by introducing a robot to bring the cartonboard box into the process for the operator to pack. Our plan is to further automate so that another robot will pack the products into the box. We want to eliminate labour completely so that customers get a ready-packed box at the end of the process.’

According to Dipen, the Vegapack M-series HFFS machine snapped up on opening day is popular among suppliers to the food, pet, home and personal care markets. The series, again, balances high line-speed with a small footprint. It is able to process both laminate and co-extruded films and promises quick and repeatable changeovers, with a click on the control panel activating a change to a new format size.