adapa Increasing shrink bag performance

Packaging specialist adapa has made a major new investment in its production capacity for shrink bags for the UK market. The adapa Group, is one of Europe’s leading companies in the flexible packaging solutions segment. This significant investment will provide two new lines for high-performance shrink bags at its UK St Helens plant. The company now offers its UK customers an exceptional level of shrink bag capacity. This strategic move further strengthens adapa’s supply chain agility, thus enabling improved service to existing and new shrink bags customers.

Shrink materials are an important part of adapa’s strategic product portfolio. The specialist for flexible packaging supplies all types, shapes and film thicknesses for perfect shrink solutions and has been doing so for over 40 years. With this recent investment, UK customers will benefit from improved service backed by the group’s comprehensive shrink expertise.

The two new lines in St Helens can process shrink bags in widths of between 200mm and 1050mm and lengths between 100mm and 2000mm. Shrink bags are available in a variety of configurations including straight or round bottom seals, loose or as perforated on reel (POR) formats. Inline printing of single colour stamps and logos is available for the entire range.

The shrink bag - better all-round

Modern shrink materials are extremely thin and consist of several different layers that give the respective packaging its special properties. Shrink packaging is enormously efficient and offers the packaged goods best protection and quality preservation throughout their entire life cycle. Shrink bags are used as ripening packaging for certain products, such as cheese or meat. With their barrier properties optimally adapted to the respective packaged goods, they ensure first-class product quality. In terms of look and feel, shrink packaging is an “honest package”: it presents its contents in a way that is clearly visible and tangible from all sides.

Increased robotic automation

The process sequences in shrink bag packaging are largely automated today. The bags are opened in the machines, filled with the product, vacuumed, sealed and finally shrunk. Robot technology is increasingly used to fill the pouches. This high degree of automation has massively increased the cycle rate (packs/minute) and has led to a doubling of the packing speed in recent years. The high speed, combined with shorter cycle times, leaves less time for sealing, so the sealing media have been adapted to ever smaller processing windows.

In addition, shrink bags for these highly automated packaging processes require appropriate mechanical strength as well as particularly reliable sealing seams, as these are exposed to high loads in the filling process. Overall, the degree of automation and thus the packaging speed depend strongly on the product being filled.

Sustainable with material savings

In the spirit of resource conservation and climate protection, adapa strives with its entire portfolio of flexible packaging solutions to combine the best packaging performance and material usage. In the shrink bag segment, this has been achieved through many years of development work, which has resulted in ever thinner films, and has made this packaging variant an extremely sustainable solution. Shrink bags combine reliable product protection - which thus simultaneously counteracts food waste - with minimal material use. For example, a shrink bag with a weight of only about 12 grams is needed for the ripening packaging of a cheese wheel weighing about 3.5 kilograms - on balance, an excellent ratio between the weight of the packaged product and that of the packaging material.

For more information: www.adapa-group.com

Looking back on approximately 40 years of experience, the specialist for flexible packaging supplies all types, shapes and film thicknesses for perfect shrink solutions.