From bagging equipment to robotic palletizing, the latest innovation in packaging equipment is debuted at PACK EXPO International. Here are just a few of the new machinery advances being demonstrated in Chicago.

Texwrap Showcases New Single Roll Bundler at PACK EXPO International

Texwrap and Bartelt, both part of the ProMach family of brands, announced a single roll bundling system, the Kayat SRX Series. The SRX Series is designed to give customers the packaging equipment for shrink bundling pre-formed trays of product with the option to add graphics with print registered shrink film.

The SRX Series provides several engineering upgrades for customers looking for a single roll bundler platform to handle a wide variety of packaged food and beverage products. The SRX Series creates shrink bundled packages with bullseye closures, using a bottom overlap seal technology for a strong seal and better product presentation.

“The SRX Series is built upon the iconic Kayat shrink bundling machine platform. We took the strengths that attributed to its market success, listened to loyal customer feedback, and went to work incorporating Texwrap innovation and technological upgrades to make the next generation Kayat SRX Series,” says Ingermar d’Agrella, Texwrap’s director of engineering.

Features and benefits of the new Kayat SRX Series include:

• Toolless adjustable wrap bar assembly: able to adjust machine for package height with no change parts
• Easy access film feed and cut: slide out the film feed and cut mechanism for easy maintenance
• Superior film sealing and control: wrap-bar mechanism and integrated heat tunnel ensure reliability and high performance
• Adjustable tunnel side and bottom air: easily adjust side and bottom air flow to create the most appealing appearance on the end product
• Dual roll film mandrels: minimize changeover time and reduce packaging equipment downtime

This new machine will debut and be demonstrating its capabilities in Texwrap’s booth N-5346.

Pneumatic Vacuum Conveying Manufacturer to Operate Versatile Conveyor at PACK EXPO

Process equipment manufacturer Volkmann USA, Bristol, PA, plans to showcase its versatile VS Series pneumatic vacuum conveying system in operation along with a companion bag discharge station. To be shown transferring dry seeds, the Volkmann VS Series conveyors are currently used in hundreds of food, chemical, pharmaceutical, and other plants worldwide to transfer powders, granules, pellets, small components, and other bulk materials safely, gently, and automatically. The conveyor may be operated in dense phase or lean phase and quickly disassembled without tools for easy cleaning to support frequent product changeovers.

The Volkmann RNT-180 bag discharge station to be displayed at the booth automatically captures fine particles as material is loaded into the hopper to prevent nuisance dust from entering the workplace. The bag dump station and conveyor are ATEX-certified as explosion-proof by design as standard.

The Volkmann VS pneumatic conveying system and bag dumping station may be tested in advance of PACK EXPO in the company's Bristol, PA test facility to verify performance. Tests may be scheduled at contact@volkmannusa.com.

Volkmann VS Conveying System, Bag Discharge Station in Action at Booth #S-2991.

MG America to Debut Latest Cartoner from Cariba

MG America, the U.S. subsidiary of MG2 of Bologna, Italy and a leading supplier of processing and packaging equipment, will introduce to the North American market the latest cartoner from established pharma machinery provider Cariba. MG America will showcase the new Cariba C221 Cartoner, an intermittent motion horizontal model capable of producing up to 120 cartons/min.

With picking-arm enabled positive carton forming, the Cariba C2221 is suitable for pharmaceutical, nutraceutical and cosmetics application. The unit is available either with a manual feeding station or a variety of automatic product feeders. In either configuration, the Cariba C221 is compatible with a broad range of common primary packaging formats, including blister packs, round/shaped glass and plastic bottles, jars, soft tubes, flow packs, sachets, and stick packs.

Changeover is fast, and based mainly on adjustments rather than replacements. Tuck-in and hot-melt closures are available, with a combination of the two providing tamper evidence. Printing options include emboss, inkjet and laser coding, and the unit comes equipped with integrated barcode-reading capabilities.

The Cariba C2221’s balcony-style design ensures easy cleaning and maintenance, as well as separation between electrical and mechanical sections. Its lowered carton magazine, full servo assisted motions, controlled adjustable transportation and coated guides combine to eliminate marking on components.

The Cariba C221 can be customized with a variety of additional features, including extended carton magazines, pre-folded leaflets and booklet dispensers, leaflet folding units (GUK), serialization-ready external modules, and remote connectivity.

“In a pharmaceutical manufacturing landscape that increasingly demands functional flexibility, the Cariba C221 offers unsurpassed versatility in its cartoning class,” said Claudio Radossi, President of MG America. “We look forward to showcasing it, as well as several other packaging and processing solutions, at this year’s PACK EXPO.”

Over more than 35 years of business, Cariba has developed an outstanding reputation for its wide range of machinery, which includes cartoners, closing machines, case packers and complete line solutions. Cariba serves a broad swath of packaging sectors, including pharmaceuticals, cosmetics, food, consumer electronics and household and cleaning products.

Booth W-15003, MG America will showcase the new Cariba C221 Cartoner, an intermittent motion horizontal model capable of producing up to 120 cartons/min.

WIPOTEC–OCS to Introduce Its Most Flexible Quality Control Machine Series to Date

Modular design of TQS-MD Series offers various combinations of product-specific quality control solutions, including weighing, marking and verifying, labeling, metal detection & serialization/aggregation.

WIPOTEC-OCS, a leading manufacturer and supplier of precision in-motion weighing, track and trace/anti-counterfeiting solutions and X-Ray scanning equipment, will showcase a new series of modular quality control machines. The company’s new Traceable Quality System Modular Design (TQS-MD) uses a “building block” concept yielding compatibility with an exceptionally broad array of products.

The modular concept inherent to TQS-MD machines makes them extraordinarily adaptable. Depending on a product’s size, shape, weight and desired throughput speed, WIPOTEC-OCS can simply combine the relevant modules for a solution tailored to meet specific needs.

A cornerstone of WIPOTEC-OCS’ new series is central control. Regardless the number of functionalities a TQS-MD models entails — a lengthy list that includes weighing, marking and verifying, labeling, metal detection and serialization/aggregation integration, among others — the unit offers one user interface. This makes product changes, article setup and layout modifications less error-prone and more user-friendly. The “one system, many capabilities” approach also has availability benefits amid a challenging supply chain landscape: With 85% of components produced in-house, WIPOTEC-OCS is well positioned to deliver not only exemplary quality standards but shortest-possible delivery times.

As the name suggests, the TQS-MD series can comprise a wide array of configurations. Typically applied to print “best before” dates, batch codes or lot numbers on boxes, the popular basic setup marks, verifies and weighs products on a footprint of just one meter in length, and can be upgraded to execute full serialization where required.

Another TQS-MD setup, geared toward food applications, can weigh, label and inspect for metallic foreign bodies in a single process step. And by adapting product handling modules to a larger dimension, TQS-MD models also can be arranged to handle big boxes like shipping cartons. Since such cases generally entail unit-level information for serialization, aggregation or shipping, a track & trace module is also usually engaged in these instances.

As with other WIPOTEC weighing solutions, all TQS-MD models employing a weighing station feature the company’s high-tech Electro-Magnetic Force Restoration (EMFR) weigh cells, a differentiating engineering design that guarantees precise weighing results.

See the company’s new Traceable Quality System Modular Design (TQS-MD) at booth S-4172.

Campbell Wrapper Corporation Showcases the New Model Revolution HS Horizontal Flow Wrapper

The new flow wrapper features Allen-Bradley servo drive technology with 5700 Kinetix drives and VPF servo motors, PanelView Plus 7 1500 touchscreen, easy clean sanitary design, quick changeover, and capable of running both cold seal and heat seal films at product speeds up to 1200 packages/min. The wrapper offers servo driven film roll spindles, feed rolls, independently driven fin wheel assemblies, fin turner and cutting head for very accurate cutoff adjustment.

The machine has state of the art film tension control, film splicing with enhanced ergonomics, automatic web tracking and sanitary modular design. The Campbell Revolution HS to be displayed at Pack Expo features Campbell’s multi-belt feeder and can be easily integrated with other automatic feeders as well as code daters, carton loaders, cartoners, etc. The standard machine has a web width of 10 inches and optional features such as: out of position product-no cut, no product-no package, end-of-film cutoff for splicing and stainless steel/wash-down construction. The Campbell Revolution HS produces packages for a wide range of applications such as snack bars, bakery and confections, frozen foods, medical products and many more food and consumer products.

Campbell Wrapper Corporation Showcases the new model Revolution HS Horizontal Flow Wrapper at PACK EXPO International, Booth S-1602.