As the range of brand owners’ food products grows, so does the variety of pack presentations required. At the same time, the demands on tray shapes and materials also increase. ‘MULTIVAC designs each customer’s traysealer from the outset in such a way that it grows with their future requirements and packaging concepts so that a wide range of packs can be produced reliably and efficiently,’ says Alex Ferguson, MD of MULTIVAC Southern Africa.
All conventional trays made of plastic or other materials and in a variety of shapes can be sealed on a MULTIVAC traysealer. The upper web is utilised to its optimum, so that minimal skeleton trim remains. ‘Our semi-automatic traysealers are ideally suited to packing small and medium-sized batches and they can be integrated seamlessly as tabletop or free-standing units into new or existing production environments,’ adds Alex.
‘As a major supplier of these machines, we can design them individually to customers’ product requirements and tray specifications. They can accommodate trays that are not self-standing as well as flat boards and other packs with product protrusion, which can be run precisely and reliably on our semi-automatic traysealers,’ he notes.
One such machine is MULTIVAC’s T 255 that offers flexible packaging, such as sealing only, modified atmosphere packaging (MAP) and MultiFresh skin packaging with and without overhang. It offers a high output of five cycles/min with MAP packaging, fast format changeover and safe cleaning as well as easy operation due to the Programmable Logic Controller (PLC) with touchscreen and convenient online access. It also features individual die design for trays up to 140mm in height.
‘From semi-automatic to automatic traysealers, the T 305 is the market leader in all quality categories – process, machine, pack quality, product protection as well as sustainability,’ maintains Alex. It is designed to enable customers to work profitably by means of easy operation, efficient cleaning, fast format changeovers and effective maintenance. The tool can be configured from one to a maximum of four tracks, the loading area is available in several lengths for optimised adaptation to production environments and there is an inline option where trays are automatically fed by upstream conveyor belts.
‘Another automatic traysealer is our TX 710, which covers a wide spectrum of food packaging applications ranging from fruit and vegetables through to meat, sausage, fish, poultry and dairy products as well as ready-made meals of all types,’ he explains. ‘Thanks to its mechanical construction, which is both robust and space-saving, and its innovative machine control featuring Flow Manager and Multi-sensor Control, the TX 710 is capable of packing with maximum flexibility and consistent reliability, even at very high output.’
‘The TX 710’s groundbreaking die concept, X-tools, is a further guarantee of versatility and pack quality,’ adds Alex. In order to simplify the process when setting up new products, trays and films, the TX 710 can be connected online with the MULTIVAC Pack Pilot, which automatically sets the machine parameters. ‘This makes it possible to achieve a very quick production start, even with new pack or product applications. The TX 710 also offers online access to MULTIVAC Smart Services, allowing machine efficiency to be increased even further,’ he concludes.
