LIFE is sweet for shrink wrap specialist Yorkshire Packaging Systems (YPS), with the company explaining it has been using its exclusive shrink film to great effect in the confectionery market.
YPS is the exclusive UK supplier for the high-gloss Bollore BY film, which the company claims is “uniquely placed” to meet the demands of confectioners.
“The presentation of the product is critical, the quality and the specific performance characteristics of the film is quite important so we need to get maximum shrink out of the film,” said Glyn Johnson, managing director at YPS.
The company has worked with confectioners including Cadbury’s and Swizzels Matlow, as well as a number of smaller independents.Glyn said Bollore was well suited to confectionary because of its aesthetics and the fact it is a low temperature film. “It’s designed as a display material so it’s got a very high shrink…It will shrink up to 70%, whereas the nearest competitor can shrink to 60%. You don’t actually shrink 70% because the product is more rigid than the film, but it pulls it tighter and produces less wrinkles.
“We also shrink faster, typically, and at a lower temperature so the equipment that runs that film generally needs less energy than some competitor films, so it tends to have a wider operating window and it’s quite often easier for the operators to use.”
Glyn also touched on the choice confectioners face of shrink wrapping or overwrapping their product. “The confectionary industry quite often uses overwrapping as well with polypropylene film, which is a non-shrink material.
“That type of wrapping is very good for two reasons – one, it can be a lot faster than shrink wrapping and two, it can use less energy than shrink wrapping. “However, it’s very limited in its flexibility. If you’ve set up for one product, it will work very well, but you’re in to thousands of pounds of change parts if you want to change the product. Whereas with shrink wrapping, it’s very flexible because you create a bag and you shrink it, so there’s no change parts, there’s very little setting changes – shrink wrapping tends to be more flexible.”
