THE great and the good of the processing and packaging machinery sector met at the NEC Birmingham in late September for three terrific days of networking, demonstrations, seminars, and product launches, as the PPMA Total Show returned with a bang.
More than 350 exhibitor stands featured the latest innovations in an industry bustling with creativity as it responds to challenges around factors including sustainability, labour shortages, and food safety.
Advanced Tooling Systems (ATS) showed off a number of its latest machines but, according to technical sales and product manager Richard Aitchison, the model which generated most interest was a new linear servo capping machine, being shown at PPMA for the first time. The model removes the need for expensive bottle change-parts and can be moved between production lines for added flexibility.
Richard told Packaging Scotland, “The machine is very flexible, low-cost and quite unique in Europe. We’ve got four heads on this just now, which will do about 40 bottles a minute. It’s got a Siemens control system and remote diagnostics. We can do screw caps, push-on caps, dispensing pumps, and triggers.”
Richard explained the idea for the machine originated from a customer in Scotland who was looking for a capping machine.
He added that at exhibitions like PPMA, you probably get as many leads from talking to co-exhibitors as you do from people coming onto the stand, citing an example from earlier in the day where he was chatting to a fellow exhibitor who had a customer looking for the sort of solution that ATS can supply.
Elsewhere, deals were being done directly on the show floor, emphasised by a hastily written ‘SOLD’ notice on a linear multihead weigher for fresh and delicate products on the Ishida stand. The Ishida CCW-R2-106B Fresh Food Weigher (FFW) was one of several standout machines on the manufacturer’s stand, offering a semi-automatic solution for handling very sticky fresh and bruise-sensitive products. The model is said to be particularly suited to factories with height limitations. Ishida revealed the ‘ergonomic layout’ makes it easy to spread out products on the feeder table, while the belt feeders enable a ‘precise and consistent’ product feed to the hoppers.
Peebles-based bottling and packaging solutions specialist Evolution was keen to highlight the firm’s range of products. Sales and marketing manager Susan Brown told Packaging Scotland the priority was starting a dialogue with potential customers.
“We’ve had good enquiries and good, positive conversations,” Susan revealed. “We’re really here to showcase our whole range, whether it’s a single machine customers need to integrate on an existing line or a full line solution.
“The nature of the type of capital equipment that we do means it is a significant investment, so often it’s people doing their initial research (we speak to at exhibitions). They know about us and then they’ll come back and speak to us when they’ve got the budget secured and they’re ready to spend.”
Evolution was promoting its association with MBF, providing rinsers, fillers and cappers. The fast-growing English wine sector is one market the business is keen to make further inroads into.
“We’re as busy as we ever have been,” Susan added. “In some instances, some investment was held back during Covid as manufacturers worked out what they needed to do, and now it’s all go. There’s quite a lot of investment going on and it feels like we’re getting our share of it, which is great.”
Yorkshire Packaging Systems (YPS) has reported a ‘healthy pipeline’ of bagging machinery leads in the wake of PPMA Total Show. Tom Hill, the firm’s in-house bagging expert, revealed the Max Pro 24 vertical bagger, in particular, has generated a huge amount of interest and a number of trials have been booked with potential customers to demonstrate the machine’s prowess in a real-life warehouse environment. With the capacity to match the output of up to four manual pack stations, YPS said the Max Pro 24 offers ‘fast and easy’ bagging of products up to 610mm wide, direct on-bag printing of logos, barcodes and text, as well as diagnostic monitoring, predictive maintenance, and remote access by engineers.
“It’s a total game-changer for e-commerce and industrial applications,” Tom said. “Any business bagging apparel, hardware, electronics, cosmetics, PPE should definitely consider it for the guaranteed gains in output and efficiency. It offers users a very swift payback on investment indeed.”
Minebea Intec had one of the largest stands at PPMA Total Show, showcasing the manufacturer’s standout weighing and inspection technologies – with a particular focus this year on automation. The new VisioPointer product was a highlight, described as helping to drive automation within production and processing manufacturing. Combined with the WPL-A automatic weigh price labeller, customers can automate their entire end of production line.
Peter Walker, Minebea Intec country manager for the UK and Ireland, told Packaging Scotland, “What we’re trying to promote this year is that we have a complete range. A lot of our literature now has the tagline ‘from a single source’ and that’s what we’re aiming to be. We’re not just for the top-end, which some people think we were historically. We have entry level, intermediate, and premium ranges. One of the reasons for this big stand is to show some of those ranges and, of course, to showcase our traditional products – the high-speed checkweighing, metal detection, and X-ray machines.”
Referring to the automation theme, Peter added he’s noticed a switch in the past year or so towards businesses looking to automate primarily to counteract labour shortages rather than the more traditional reasons of saving product and money. He said a number of long-term projects have started to come to fruition in recent months, and appearing at exhibitions remains an important part of Minebea Intec’s strategy.
“It’s something that fits with what we do in general,” he explained. “Our sales technique, if you like, is demonstration because if you’re going to be premium-end and have performance advantage and build quality advantage, you have to show people that and prove it.”
Beckhoff’s line-up included the new MX-System, described as a pluggable system solution for control cabinet-free automation. As fewer components are required than in traditional control cabinet construction, the entire system is more compact than previous solutions and requires less installation space. Beckhoff revealed the system footprint is reduced, while availability and flexibility are increased.
Fortress Technology revealed its newest digital reporting feature at the Birmingham event – Contact 4.0. Uncovering ‘real time’ production trends, the firm explained the software can collect QA documentation automatically and oversee the performance of an ‘unlimited’ number of Fortress metal detectors, X-rays, checkweighers, and combination machines connected on the same network.
Creating a centralised repository of live and recorded data that assists food processors to automate QA documentation, Contact 4.0 enables factories to track events and documents all potential product risks.
Rather than react to production scenarios, Fortress said customers with Contact 4.0 can view and extract time-stamped data reports whenever they want. Reports are delivered in the format most closely aligned to each customers’ common reporting standards.
Commercial manager Jodie Curry said, “Manually monitoring food inspection machine performance can be extremely labour intensive and impact productivity. Automated and networked data extraction and real time monitoring are proven to enhance production efficiency and minimise machine downtime.”
IMA ILAPAK used the PPMA Total Show to discuss with customers the energy savings that can be achieved by upgrading to a digital servo platform, and to present the company’s latest labour automation solutions.
The firm has engineered what it calls a ‘breakthrough’ automatic splicing system for its Vegatronic 6400HD (Hygienic Design).
IMA ILAPAK said automatic splicing has always been a ‘pain point’ on baggers due to the geometry in the forming tube. The firm revealed it has overcome this by designing a splicing process in which the films are angled in a way that ‘guarantees’ successful splicing, eliminating the need for manual reel changes.
JentonDimaco unveiled its newest food label verification innovation, called Veri-VIEW.
Label-related defects are cited as the second most common reason for costly and brand-damaging product withdrawals and retailer returns. Typical errors include incorrect use-by dates, missing allergen information, illegible barcodes, and crumpled labels.
The company said many of these can be attributed to printing faults or human errors, which are preventable with the use of automated label verification technology. Veri-VIEW offers real-time viewing of all the data generated by every Veri-PACK system on the factory floor.
MD Dr Russell Sion said, “JentonDimaco label verification systems are an efficient way to authenticate all aspects of data and artwork on retail labels including price, barcodes, use-by dates and artwork revisions. All of this data is verified against a master specification held on the JentonDimaco Veri-CENTRAL server, which sources data from each food manufacturer’s MRP server or production spreadsheets.
“This automated alignment of data significantly mitigates the risk of human errors, most of which occur in fast paced food processing and packaging environments due to operative fatigue and when variable and non-variable data doesn’t match up.”
The three-day PPMA seminar programme featured a number of presentations and discussion centred around the theme ‘The Future Of…’.
Compiled to address the challenges facing industry, topics included smart technologies, product testing, compliance, anti-counterfeiting, import regulations, and sustainability.
The PPMA Industry Awards winners were also announced during the show. Fortress Technology triumphed in the Innovative Processing System category for its ‘Fortress Halo’ innovation.
There were also gongs for Markem-Imaje (Innovative Packaging Machinery), Pace Mechanical Handling (Innovative Robotics), Crest Solutions (Innovative Vision), and Epsom UK (Outstanding Customer Service).
Following the pandemic-related constraints of the past two years, organisers also helped bring people together again this year with a spectacular gala dinner, headlined by comedian Jason Manford and featuring live music from Wandering Soul as well as casino tables and dancing.
