Drives and Controls January 2023

40 n PACKAGING January 2023 www.drivesncontrols.com Adapting to sustainable packaging materials H ave you ever ordered a small item online, and then felt incensed when it arrived in an oversized box packed out with bubble-wrap, air-filled cushions or paper inserts? Consumers (and I am as guilty of this as the next person) are quick to criticise – particularly when it comes to over- packaging. They don’t appreciate that the e-commerce retailer might not be able to sustain the higher cost of stocking ten different box sizes, or have an automation system that can cope with varying sizes. Consumers don’t care about the barriers that businesses have to overcome to make their packaging more sustainable. Smaller boxes. Thinner walls. Lighter weights. Lower virgin plastic content. Surely that’s simple enough to do? Only it never is that simple. Whether it is switching from rigid to flexible packaging, light-weighting, thin-walling, incorporating recycled content, moving from multilayer to monolayer material or migrating from plastic to paper, rethinking packaging to make it more sustainable is a highly complex process. One of the biggest challenges that FMCG (fast-moving consumer goods) manufacturers face during packaging redesigns is how to adapt their production and packaging lines to accommodate new materials, formats and designs. The key to making a painless transition to sustainable packaging lies in technology. ‘Black box’ technologies that you can’t even see, such as algorithms, AI, motion control, programming and sensors. It’s about harnessing these to drive flexible and future-proof automation systems that are intelligent and dynamic enough to cope with whatever they encounter. Take, for example, the flexible films used in form, fill and seal, flow wrapping and pouch-making applications. They are a huge focus area for innovation, because not only is there a steady stream of brands looking to switch from rigid to flexible formats, but there is also a large base of existing film users who are wanting to move to more eco-friendly films. Their strategies range from downgauging to thinner films, to switching to recyclable monolayer films, biodegradable films, paper films or films with recycled content. Pain points Most of today’s packaging machines weren’t intended to accommodate any of these new films. They were designed to run highly consistent virgin plastic films of a certain thickness. The pain points that need to be addressed when adapting equipment to run emerging materials are: film tension control and sealing; thin films that burn and tangle more easily; paper films that tear; and films with a high recycled content which are inherently variable from one batch to the next. Even slight changes in film thickness lead to uneven winding and unwinding One of the biggest challenges facing FMCG manufacturers during packaging redesigns is how to adapt their existing lines to accommodate new materials, formats and designs. Patricia Torres, industry marketing manager for food and commodities at Omron Europe, examines some of these challenges – and possible answers. Plastic films offer many attractions as packaging materials but they also pose problems