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BAGGING SYSTEMS

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ACHIEVING INCREASED EFFICIENCY THROUGH DETAILED SPECIFICATION by Imeco

he increasing application of automation and technology in actual industry have pushed all companies to apply more efficient and specific production systems. The requirements, a producer is subjected to, became tighter in terms of speed, assistance and quality. Every end-line of production withstands to this changes. Bagging technology is one among the most important. Bagging the final product is a heavy-duty process in every powdery or granular process production plant. So automation is highly recommended but, so far, not all the markets are adopting this solution, for many reasons. In any case the bagging systems are required to be as much flexible and accurate as possible, considering the market destination and the personalisation requested by every plant, considered its product, packaging and market.

Finding applicable bagging systems

Packaging can obviously be considered as a marketing tool. The surface of the bag, the type of closure and the material used; with all of them allowing a company to add value themselves to a unique and distinctive brand. Several bagging systems are applicable depending on the products and the reference market. Cement is world-wide packed into valve bags as well as products that need low sanitation requirements and, almost, no closure. FFS (Form Fill and Seal) is often and mostly used for a very high speed production of food 62 | July 2016 - Milling and Grain

products; open-mouth bags are still the most widespread, because of the design’s many advantages, including accurate weights, more product bulk weight and bag size flexibility as well as being easy opening for the end customer. For more than 30 years, IMECO has been a world leader in production of weighing and bagging solutions for every kind of powdery or granular products, in the food, chemical or agriculture industry whatsoever. Progress and technology drove industry to nearly abandon the traditional jute or cotton bags and to replace them with quite new materials such as plastic and paper bags. In terms of ecological balance, contrary to what is known, the use of woven plastic bags, when correctly recycled is preferred; since the manufacturing of paper is very energy intensive. Considering the minor utilisation of jute and cotton and considered the costly process of paper production, plastic materials are the most common in bagging systems all over the world, but a high variety is present. To allow the maximum flexibility, IMECO developed its automatic bagging systems able to handle all the available combination of bags materials, such as PP woven, PP laminated, PP woven with PE liner, PE, multi wall paper, coated paper, paper with PE liner, paper with aluminum among others. Choosing a bagging system means to opt for a manual or automatic solution. This choice has to be made in a strict relation with the producer needs considering his product, volume production, destination market, bag quality and weight accuracy.

Bagging system performance limit variables

Manual bagging system performances are related to two simple