Latest / Through the Line: Packaging and Processing / Live From PACK EXPO—Dry-Formed Fiber, Square Yogurt Cups, and a Printer Fast Enough for Sunrise 2027: Packaging World

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Live From PACK EXPO—Dry-Formed Fiber, Square Yogurt Cups, and a Printer Fast Enough for Sunrise 2027: Packaging World · Through the Line: Packaging and Processing

• 0:03
  SPEAKER_01: Welcome to Through the Line, a podcast exploring innovations and information across the packaging and processing landscape.
• 0:11
  SPEAKER_01: From topics impacting consumer packaged goods and healthcare packaging to the latest technologies and food processing operations.
• 0:22
  SPEAKER_00: Hi, everybody, and welcome to another edition of the Through the Line podcast.
• 0:26
  SPEAKER_00: I'm here with my partner in crime, Anne-Marie Mowen.
• 0:29
  SPEAKER_00: We are sitting down for the first time in hours on day one of PAC Expo International here in Chicago.
• 0:35
  SPEAKER_00: Beautiful weather.
• 0:36
  SPEAKER_00: I hear the bears just won, so everybody's in a good mood, or at least I am.
• 0:40
  SPEAKER_00: So Anne-Marie, welcome.
• 0:41
  SPEAKER_00: See a few interesting things out there.
• 0:43
  SPEAKER_02: Hi, Matt.
• 0:43
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, it's been an exciting first day.
• 0:46
  SPEAKER_02: I think I put two times the steps on my Fitbit.
• 0:50
  SPEAKER_02: So I've been running around quite a bit, but it's always fascinating to see these trends that we've been talking about so long come to fruition in new materials, new equipment.
• 1:02
  SPEAKER_02: So it's been an interesting day.
• 1:03
  SPEAKER_02: How about yourself?
• 1:04
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, same thing.
• 1:05
  SPEAKER_00: Manifesting a lot.
• 1:06
  SPEAKER_00: All the stuff, all the trends, all the big picture things that we're you hear about at the 30,000-foot level, you're seeing the actual nuts and bolts of how that becomes a real thing or becomes a real technology or uh enacts things or even equipment that's built with EPR in mind.
• 1:21
  SPEAKER_00: EPR sounds like a material side thing.
• 1:22
  SPEAKER_00: The equipment is being built with the needs of the brand owner, the CPG at their heart, and that it just manifests itself in whether it's the equipment that's saving electricity or energy inputs or floor space or water inputs or the materials themselves that become more recyclable or more sustainable in general.
• 1:39
  SPEAKER_00: Actually, I saw one this morning that was pretty interesting.
• 1:41
  SPEAKER_00: You're familiar with dry molded fiber, right?
• 1:43
  SPEAKER_00: Yes.
• 1:44
  SPEAKER_00: Okay.
• 1:44
  SPEAKER_00: A couple of years ago, I think Pat put together something on a lot of movement around dry molded fiber.
• 1:50
  SPEAKER_00: We've known about pull pack, and basically what it happens is you're removing the very water-intensive step of forming egg cartons and that sort of thing.
• 1:58
  SPEAKER_00: So this morning I saw a company called Yangi, hopefully I'm pronouncing that right.
• 2:02
  SPEAKER_00: Swedish company, they build a dry forming machine.
• 2:05
  SPEAKER_00: So they actually build the equipment.
• 2:06
  SPEAKER_00: The platform is called Solera, so the equipment is called Solera, but really what drives it is something called fiber IQ, and we'll get to that in a second.
• 2:14
  SPEAKER_00: What the brand owners need to know is that they're looking for alternatives to plastic trays for say heat and something that might be frozen in the frozen aisle or even in food service packaging, that sort of thing.
• 2:24
  SPEAKER_00: As I said, wet molded pulp uses a ton of water and energy, and thermal form paper can't do those deep, rigid shapes.
• 2:31
  SPEAKER_00: And then dry forming is what we're talking about is a third route, and it doesn't use as much water, it doesn't use as much energy, and you can get really interesting, really good-looking smooth shapes with embossments and all sorts of nice digital printing, that sort of things.
• 2:46
  SPEAKER_00: So dry forming has basically three stages.
• 2:49
  SPEAKER_00: You form the fiber, you press it under heat and a lot of pressure, and then normally you'd cut the excess out of a web.
• 2:56
  SPEAKER_00: So Yangi's argument is that the first stage, the actual forming it, is where the real differentiation happens and what they do, and such that they are not cutting out of a web.
• 3:05
  SPEAKER_00: The closest I can think of to describing it would be digitally printing molded fiber, which is probably it's clearly it's not comparing apples to apples here, but you're actually applying the fiber in it to the places that you want as opposed to cutting it out of a web.
• 3:20
  SPEAKER_00: So normally this is fiber IQ, the fibers go through a mill that separates them, and then there's the barrier chemistry.
• 3:27
  SPEAKER_00: So barrier can be added.
• 3:28
  SPEAKER_00: So some sort of coating that's added, other additives that are necessary.
• 3:32
  SPEAKER_00: So barriers built right into the recipe, and then the air fluffs around it and creates these separated differentiated fibers, which is where the word airlaid comes from.
• 3:41
  SPEAKER_00: It was a totally new word for me, airlaid.
• 3:43
  SPEAKER_00: So air basically does the dispersing job that water does in paper making.
• 3:48
  SPEAKER_00: So it just spreads it out at whatever distance.
• 3:50
  SPEAKER_00: This is why it becomes almost like printing.
• 3:51
  SPEAKER_00: You're good, you're applying the paper, the airlaid paper to certain spots.
• 3:55
  SPEAKER_00: So then there's two pads that an inner and outer pad have different chemistries and different materials, and they put press these two together with some heat, and out comes this.
• 4:05
  SPEAKER_00: Normally in our applications, it would be trays, it could be coffee and cups.
• 4:08
  SPEAKER_00: But regardless, this fiber IQ, and I'm probably not doing justice, but what it really is doing, it reminds me of nanography from Landa, where printing had always been you using liquid ink.
• 4:19
  SPEAKER_00: So a linquin is a viscous liquid substance that when you apply it to paper, the paper kind of sucks it in and it spreads out.
• 4:26
  SPEAKER_00: In this case, you're almost unitizing it or you're digitizing it in the sense where it's a dry, you're applying it only where it needs to happen.
• 4:33
  SPEAKER_00: So you can have corners and edges that are thicker and other areas that have less of it.
• 4:38
  SPEAKER_00: All of this ladders up to sustainability and brands and CPGs that want to move away from materials that can't be recycled.
• 4:45
  SPEAKER_00: All of this is fiber-based, so it can be recycled, which is great.
• 4:49
  SPEAKER_00: Even with uh some of the chemistries that they have on there for barrier, it can be recycled.
• 4:53
  SPEAKER_00: And then because it's formed into such a tight, tightly packed molded fiber, digital printing, actual digital printing can actually happen on it.
• 5:01
  SPEAKER_00: So you can have really great decoration and embellishments and embossment in the paper.
• 5:05
  SPEAKER_00: So, one really interesting thing that I saw as of actually 9:30 a.m.
• 5:09
  SPEAKER_00: this morning.
• 5:09
  SPEAKER_00: So I hit the ball out of the park early.
• 5:11
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 5:11
  SPEAKER_00: How about you?
• 5:12
  SPEAKER_02: Kicked it off well.
• 5:13
  SPEAKER_02: You told me you had something really interesting to share, and that is very interesting.
• 5:18
  SPEAKER_02: I saw a lot of materials that are also following that trend of paper, fiber, barrier coatings.
• 5:27
  SPEAKER_02: And one of the booths that I saw today was UPM specialty materials.
• 5:32
  SPEAKER_02: And they had several different projects that they were showing me that are still in the pilot stage or the proof of concept stage.
• 5:41
  SPEAKER_02: But what they really were talking about is collaborating with other companies on, say, the barrier materials, so that they're not just providing the paper, they're actually finding partners that can provide the full package, so to speak, which is extremely helpful if you're looking for a paper solution and to address some of these issues with barrier.
• 6:06
  SPEAKER_02: And one that they were really excited about is uh partnership they're doing with you, well, it's UPM, Ingredion, and Paramelt.
• 6:14
  SPEAKER_02: So they're providing the paper, obviously.
• 6:17
  SPEAKER_02: And then this barrier is starch-based, and that's from Ingredion, and the Paramelt is a bio-based heat seal chemistry.
• 6:27
  SPEAKER_02: So it's completely bio-based and it's grease-resistant, heat sealable.
• 6:33
  SPEAKER_02: So it's been developed to replace fossil-based materials, and we know that there's such a push toward paperization.
• 6:42
  SPEAKER_02: And like I said, it's very exciting to see.
• 6:45
  SPEAKER_02: It's in the proof of concept stage, but they had a very small sample, and they were it was a donut hole package.
• 6:54
  SPEAKER_02: So you can think of the types of products that could go into that.
• 6:58
  SPEAKER_02: Something like a donut home.
• 7:00
  SPEAKER_02: Food requires barrier.
• 7:02
  SPEAKER_02: So that was another paper product that I saw.
• 7:06
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 7:06
  SPEAKER_00: Paper is everywhere.
• 7:07
  SPEAKER_00: I know this is a huge equipment show, so we will get into the equipment shortly.
• 7:10
  SPEAKER_00: But here another one, another example this morning was at Fresh Lock.
• 7:13
  SPEAKER_00: Fresh Lock is we're known for the closures, the zipper closures, these sorts of things.
• 7:17
  SPEAKER_00: They now have, again, proof of concept stage, but they're working with the usual suspects, Western Michigan University and their repulpability standards.
• 7:24
  SPEAKER_00: And Mondi, they're actually working with Mondi, amongst others.
• 7:27
  SPEAKER_00: It is an ethylene-based closure, but given the size or the dimensions or the ratio of paper, let's say a paper pouch to the closure itself, you can potentially have a small enough amount at the poly such that it could be not necessarily removed by the consumer either.
• 7:42
  SPEAKER_00: It can be removed in the repulping face.
• 7:44
  SPEAKER_00: So a recyclable paper pouch can have a reclosability feature, which it's not going to be on every single package, it's not going to be for every single product.
• 7:52
  SPEAKER_00: But reclosability is another thing that fights against being able to reopen and reuse it, fights against food waste, which is all of a part of the same trends with sustainability.
• 8:01
  SPEAKER_00: Anything else on the sustainability side of the coin for you, Henry?
• 8:05
  SPEAKER_02: Absolutely.
• 8:05
  SPEAKER_02: It's everywhere.
• 8:06
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 8:07
  SPEAKER_02: So also over in the materials pavilion, I saw uh technology from Grindr, and it's actually a finalist for the Technology Excellence Awards for PMMI and PACExpo.
• 8:19
  SPEAKER_02: It's called Cubo, and it isn't a paper product.
• 8:24
  SPEAKER_02: It's it can be polypropylene, PET, or RPET.
• 8:28
  SPEAKER_02: So it's a square package rather than your typical round package for food.
• 8:35
  SPEAKER_02: And it has quite a few advantages when you look at it from a sustainability and a marketing standpoint.
• 8:41
  SPEAKER_02: From the sustainability standpoint, they were telling me that you can fit 35% more of these packages on a pallet.
• 8:51
  SPEAKER_02: If you look at a cylindrical cup container versus this square container, it can be it's squat and it has more volume because of the rounded or square sides versus a round pup.
• 9:07
  SPEAKER_02: So you can get more onto a palette.
• 9:09
  SPEAKER_02: It also stacks better, it also presents better on shelf, where you have a better billboard straight across the front.
• 9:18
  SPEAKER_02: And one thing that was an added benefit that I hadn't thought about is that when you have a round package like a yogurt pup, it can get turned on the shelf.
• 9:28
  SPEAKER_02: So you don't see the branding on the front.
• 9:31
  SPEAKER_02: But with this, it's not going to move anywhere.
• 9:33
  SPEAKER_02: So they're pairing that with their clickup lid, which snaps in.
• 9:39
  SPEAKER_02: And it's also another sustainability technology because it eliminates the need for the inside foil liding that you typically would have.
• 9:48
  SPEAKER_02: So it gets rid of that, it clicks in.
• 9:51
  SPEAKER_02: It's really nice because I know when I'm searching in my refrigerator for something, I'll knock something off.
• 9:59
  SPEAKER_02: And the package that the lid pops up and things go everywhere.
• 10:03
  SPEAKER_02: With this, it doesn't.
• 10:05
  SPEAKER_02: That's another interesting technology.
• 10:08
  SPEAKER_02: And paired with the package, it also can use the same material.
• 10:12
  SPEAKER_02: So it's a phono material solution.
• 10:16
  SPEAKER_00: Okay.
• 10:16
  SPEAKER_00: And we can continue on with the sustainability and material side of things for quite some time, and we may come back to it.
• 10:22
  SPEAKER_00: But you did say something that was interesting about shelf presence and having uh orientation of a product such that it maximizes the impact it has for somebody walking by on a shelf.
• 10:32
  SPEAKER_00: And you think that would be we'd be talking about a container or a material or a shape or a structure of a package, but there's actually equipment that is orienting equipment that is designed specifically with that in mind.
• 10:42
  SPEAKER_00: And one company, Pace, I was at ProMoc, I was at ProMac for two hours.
• 10:46
  SPEAKER_00: There's no way you can go into that booth.
• 10:48
  SPEAKER_00: If you plan to cover ProMoc, you have to cover ProMoc.
• 10:50
  SPEAKER_00: And there are a lot of I appreciate that Greg showed me around for as long as he did.
• 10:54
  SPEAKER_00: He probably missed lunch.
• 10:56
  SPEAKER_00: But that was an interesting piece of equipment.
• 10:57
  SPEAKER_00: It was Pace is known for orienters or on Scramblers.
• 11:00
  SPEAKER_00: I don't know if I said Orienter or Scrambler.
• 11:03
  SPEAKER_00: This is an Orienter that is designed specifically.
• 11:06
  SPEAKER_00: It could be any type of product, but it's designed specifically for, let's say, big box stores or items where you might not be buying one single bottle of, I don't know, suntan lotion.
• 11:16
  SPEAKER_00: You might be buying four in a four-pack for all summer long or something like that.
• 11:19
  SPEAKER_00: When you're doing shrink over these, sometimes they're all facing different directions.
• 11:23
  SPEAKER_00: So this is just an upstream uh vision-based.
• 11:25
  SPEAKER_00: So it's not a mechanical, it's a vision-based and servo-based system that will present.
• 11:31
  SPEAKER_00: Again, I'll go with the example of suntan lotion in the little spray, like a metal spray bottle, present it such that the suntan lotion, let's go with, I don't know, beach bum or whatever, is facing the same direction.
• 11:42
  SPEAKER_00: And then a clear shrink can be put.
• 11:44
  SPEAKER_00: Not, I think it was an axon machine that was putting clear shrink on it.
• 11:47
  SPEAKER_00: And you can get really clever with that because you're doing it digitally, you're not doing it mechanically.
• 11:51
  SPEAKER_00: Suddenly, you can have these packs where you have, let's say, five in a row and they might spell out a word or something like beach or something like that.
• 11:59
  SPEAKER_00: Each one can have a different increment.
• 12:00
  SPEAKER_00: So they can come in off of different feedlines.
• 12:02
  SPEAKER_00: But regardless, orientation and how those things appear on a shelf is really a result of equipment, not of packaging design or anything like that.
• 12:10
  SPEAKER_00: So that's an interesting thing.
• 12:12
  SPEAKER_00: Have you seen anything equipment?
• 12:13
  SPEAKER_00: There's huge pieces of equipment out here.
• 12:15
  SPEAKER_00: Have you seen anything on the equipment side so far?
• 12:17
  SPEAKER_02: I didn't see a huge piece of equipment, but I did see a piece of equipment that is again that manifestation of those trends we're seeing.
• 12:25
  SPEAKER_02: And some of those, this isn't a regulation, but when we talk about when we talk about Sunrise 2027 and the need for the GS1 compliant 2D codes, there is a technology from Levenger.
• 12:42
  SPEAKER_02: It's called the 2D jet.
• 12:44
  SPEAKER_02: And I think you mentioned Usaudit Interfact as well.
• 12:47
  SPEAKER_02: But it really addresses that challenge of having speed and the high resolution at the same time.
• 12:54
  SPEAKER_02: In the past, you may have been constrained by how fast the printer could print at the speed you needed, these variable data codes.
• 13:06
  SPEAKER_02: So this has a 320 dpi resolution and it operates at 120 meters per minute.
• 13:14
  SPEAKER_02: It's a thermal ink jet printer.
• 13:17
  SPEAKER_02: I also found it interesting that you can change the cartridge on the fly so you don't have to stop the machine to do that.
• 13:24
  SPEAKER_02: And it prints the GS1 datalink code, the 2D GS1 and data matrix.
• 13:32
  SPEAKER_02: So it's doing all the things that are required for Sunrise 2027.
• 13:37
  SPEAKER_00: Good.
• 13:38
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 13:38
  SPEAKER_00: So I hadn't even heard about, we've been talking about Sunrise all summer, but I haven't seen any instances of it yet.
• 13:43
  SPEAKER_00: So I'm glad you're already picking that up on your show floor.
• 13:45
  SPEAKER_00: And yeah, I noticed that at Interpack earlier this year.
• 13:48
  SPEAKER_00: Let's see what else.
• 13:49
  SPEAKER_00: ProMoc was had all sorts of things in it, but you mentioned the technology excellence awards.
• 13:53
  SPEAKER_00: There's another one that's up for a Tech Excellence Award, and that was from Zocmi.
• 13:58
  SPEAKER_00: So I don't know if you're familiar with Zocme as a recent, I think a fairly recent addition, maybe in the last two to three years for ProMoc, but they're Italian from Parma, and they're known sort of the way that Barry Waymiller, their pneumatic scale anglist, is known for seamers, but does other things but isn't really known for seamers.
• 14:14
  SPEAKER_00: Zocmi originally was known for seamers, but they've since gotten into fillers.
• 14:18
  SPEAKER_00: It's the this the next step on the line is seeming they right upstream from them is the filling, so it may only make sense.
• 14:24
  SPEAKER_00: So they're launching here at Pac Expo.
• 14:26
  SPEAKER_00: So this is one of those debut unveiling kind of things, is a B fill.
• 14:30
  SPEAKER_00: It's spelled B-E-F-I-L-L.
• 14:32
  SPEAKER_00: I don't know if it's B E fill or B fill.
• 14:34
  SPEAKER_00: It's an electronic volumetric rotary filler, and each valve fills the can to a measured volume rather do it than to a set level.
• 14:41
  SPEAKER_00: So it's actually looking at the can itself.
• 14:43
  SPEAKER_00: And then the rotary carousel keeps the cans moving continuously throughout the fill.
• 14:47
  SPEAKER_00: It goes fast, it's it comes in sizes all the way up to 128 filling valves.
• 14:51
  SPEAKER_00: So you can imagine that it gets up into the larger filling operations, mostly cans, but it can be else, it can be other products as well.
• 14:57
  SPEAKER_00: But you're shooting, you're pushing 2,000 cans a minute, I think up to 1500 is safe to say, but you're getting into that really big volume range where you're starting to think about the big canning lines.
• 15:08
  SPEAKER_00: So it actually built, it has three purpose-built built valve families for it.
• 15:12
  SPEAKER_00: So one is for carbonated beverages, your Cokes, your Anheuser Bushes.
• 15:16
  SPEAKER_00: One handles like oxygen-sensitive products, which we know are growing.
• 15:20
  SPEAKER_00: And then one handles hot fill, because we know hotfill is a big thing too.
• 15:23
  SPEAKER_00: So the biggest thing is that the brand owners have traditionally had to think about a different setup for each one of those three kind of lanes.
• 15:30
  SPEAKER_00: If they're going to be doing carbonated, they're going to be doing hot fill.
• 15:33
  SPEAKER_00: So think about contract packagers, contract manufacturers who might have a utility for really doing a lot of different things or getting the same, using the same equipment for a lot of different applications and get a lot of flexibility out of it.
• 15:44
  SPEAKER_00: Even when you're getting towards that, I 2000 is probably too fast, but 1500-ish per minute.
• 15:50
  SPEAKER_00: That's a really quick filling machine.
• 15:51
  SPEAKER_00: So that's one you mentioned one.
• 15:53
  SPEAKER_00: So we got two out of, I think, the nine in one podcast of the technology excellence awards.
• 15:58
  SPEAKER_00: Anything else that you saw out there?
• 15:59
  SPEAKER_00: I know we're kind of coming up on time, but I want to make sure you were not missing anything that you may have seen.
• 16:04
  SPEAKER_02: There's one technology that I saw, and I've never I've never heard of this company before.
• 16:09
  SPEAKER_02: Actually, it's Ngenesis, and they're automating one of the most holly, dull but necessary tasks on end of end-of-line equipment, and that is the magazine loading for cartons.
• 16:26
  SPEAKER_02: So it's funny we take for granted while you load it manually, but with automation everywhere, this is a perfect fit.
• 16:33
  SPEAKER_02: So it depiletizes cases of flattened carton blanks and it feeds them into the magazine.
• 16:40
  SPEAKER_02: This is for a horizontal cartner, and it can handle uh stack of cartons up to 50 pounds and three cartons a minute.
• 16:51
  SPEAKER_02: So it relieves that repetitive manual task and it also addresses ergonomic challenges as well or ergonomic problems with yeah, just bending and picking things up over and over again.
• 17:04
  SPEAKER_00: Sure.
• 17:05
  SPEAKER_00: So I can imagine that it automated magazine replenishment is something so simple.
• 17:10
  SPEAKER_00: But the amount of the hours of labor it saves, also the amount of downtime.
• 17:14
  SPEAKER_00: And can you imagine what happens when let's somebody somebody forgets to load a magazine?
• 17:19
  SPEAKER_00: That is so far upstream that everything else and the whole line shuts down.
• 17:23
  SPEAKER_00: So something as simple as that can go a long way.
• 17:25
  SPEAKER_00: That's we've only been here for a few hours so far where we've got three more days.
• 17:29
  SPEAKER_00: I don't know why I'm looking forward to seeing more on the I guess the automation side, the the controls sides of things.
• 17:35
  SPEAKER_00: I'm looking forward to seeing more on I haven't gotten to West Hall yet, so I haven't really gotten the deep dive into materials, even though I started out with Yankee on the materials side, but I know there's a lot going on over there.
• 17:45
  SPEAKER_00: E-commerce, I've been already hearing quite a bit about retrofits or moves towards a hygienic design and being able to be Rostown ready, these sorts of things, moving from IP65 to IP69 to that direction.
• 17:57
  SPEAKER_00: So those are a few things I'm looking forward to.
• 17:59
  SPEAKER_00: Anything else on your radar before we close up shock here?
• 18:02
  SPEAKER_02: I spent a lot of time with materials today, so I am looking forward to seeing more equipment.
• 18:08
  SPEAKER_02: I knew I know I do have something new with e-commerce mailers, which isn't equipment, but a lot of new things that I'm excited to see on the machinery side technology.
• 18:19
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, yeah.
• 18:20
  SPEAKER_00: And it won't just be Amber or Anne Marie and myself.
• 18:23
  SPEAKER_00: We've got, I think, eight or nine editors that have fanned out here.
• 18:25
  SPEAKER_00: So we'll get a lot of different opinions and a lot of different points of view from a lot of different corners of McCormick Center the next couple of days.
• 18:32
  SPEAKER_00: So I think that's about all the time that we have for this edition of If Through the Line podcast.
• 18:36
  SPEAKER_00: Thanks, Anne Marie.
• 18:37
  SPEAKER_01: Thank you.
• 18:38
  SPEAKER_00: Make sure you rest tonight and we'll be at it again tomorrow.
• 18:42
  SPEAKER_01: Thank you for listening to Through the Line Packaging and Processing.
• 18:46
  SPEAKER_01: You can listen to more episodes on all streaming platforms.
• 18:49
  SPEAKER_01: Be sure to visit us at packworld.com, profoodworld.com, and healthcarepackaging.com for more packaging and processing news.
• 18:58
  SPEAKER_01: This podcast was edited by Bri Guntz.