Sachet packaging from Kliklok
December 15, 2011
In every supermarket today, there is a wide range of food and beverage products available in sachets. These are made using flexible packaging material to form a package which is then filled & sealed in a sequence of operations to form a three or four side sealed sachet, and in many cases these are multi-packed into cartons.
Ideally, for food producers & packers, the sachet cartoning process is part of an integrated system. This is a field of expertise well known to Kliklok, and the company has recently installed several successful sachet packaging lines.
One global leader in the dry soup industry in Australia wanted to upgrade their packaging lines with new multi-lane high speed filling equipment, and chose an integrated loading & cartoning solution from Kliklok.
The line needed to accept sachets of dried soup from six lanes, at up to 70 sachets per lane. The Kliklok PRIMA end load cartoner was chosen for its compact design, robust stainless steel construction, repeatable size change ability and short flight pitch.
For automatic loading and collation in 2’s and 4’s, an identical pair of Kliklok Triplex Cascade Loaders was ordered. With rotary motion, driven by ‘stepper style’ servo motors, these were the preferred choice over the reciprocating motion of the plant’s existing bomb door loaders. Each Triplex loader was designed as a single unit, with a single HMI control system to mirror the 3 lane bagmaker systems that feed each one.
In France, Kliklok again installed their PRIMA cartoner in a large dry foods plant, integrating with a twin cascade loader unit which stacked & transferred sachets of dessert powder mix in collations of 2, 3 and 5 at varying speeds up to 100 cartons per minute. The line included integration with the customer’s own leaflet feeder.
Kliklok is currently working on a new project, again for sachet cartoning of powdered products in Belgium. With many sizes and collations to handle, the customer needed a cartoner that could be rapidly and frequently changed between formats. So due to its history of success in sachet cartoning, the reliable PRIMA was chosen, combined with a Triplex Cascade Loader. The line starts from the customer’s sachet maker, delivering sachets in three lanes to the Triplex Cascade. An overhead ‘confiner’ flattens and conditions the sachets prior to insertion into the carton, packing stacks of between three and seven sachets per carton.
Another new Kliklok sachet-packing project is for one of the largest ingredients producers in Europe, who chose the intermittent CCI end load cartoner with a special dual infeed race-track unit. The system works on demand, with the sachets being delivered from the sachet maker in a single stream narrow edge leading. Sachets are transferred into the racetrack, then grouped into 10, 15 & 25’s and moved upright so the sachets are now “on edge”. The sachets are held in individual pockets, then a booklet is automatically fed into each count. The short footprint CCI cartoner erects a carton into the flights and moves the carton to the product loading area. When the product is loaded with a servo pusher, it indexes to the next pitch where flaps are folded, prior to being glue closed.
Kliklok’s latest innovation is their CRL (Collating Robotic Loader). This flexible machine lends itself perfectly to the automatic grouping & loading of sachets and flow wrapped products for either end load or top load cartoning. The CRL incorporates advanced motion control technology and a robotic Flex Picker, plus a servo driven race-track. Carton infeed & positioning belts are also servo driven with a quick release system for easy & repeatable size change.
Demonstrations of the CRL are taking place at Kliklok over the coming weeks, to many of Europe’s leading food producers, showcasing the versatility of this machine to collate & load not only sachets but also flow-wrapped products like cereal bars. If you would like to see the CRL in action, email m.tatum@kliklok-int.com to arrange a viewing.
With a proven history of expertise and success in sachet packaging projects, Kliklok offers a comprehensive and efficient range of high performance automatic equipment to suit every application.
