Technical article
How to Choose a Food Packaging Machine
Most packaging-machine enquiries start with a machine name. The better starting point is the pack you want to sell and the product that goes into it. Work through these steps in order and the machine usually chooses itself.
1. Start From the Pack, Not the Machine
Retail bag, stand-up pouch, lidded tray, flow-wrapped product, vacuum pack, bulk bag? The pack is set by the customer, the shelf and the product's shelf-life needs. Each pack type points to a machine family: roll-film bags to vertical form fill seal, wrapped products and trays to flow pack, ready-made pouches to premade pouch machines, lidded trays to tray sealers.
2. Describe How the Product Behaves
Free-flowing or sticky, fragile or robust, dry or wet, frozen, powdery, oily? These properties decide the weighing or filling system far more than the product's name does. Irregular pieces point to a multihead weigher, uniform granules to a linear weigher or cup filler, powders to an auger, liquids to a pump or piston filler.
3. Fix the Target Weight and Tolerance
The declared weight and the legal and commercial tolerance around it decide how accurate the doser must be — and how much product is given away above the declared weight every day. Give-away is often a larger running cost than the machine's energy or film.
4. Work Out the Capacity You Really Need
Required packs per minute come from daily output, pack weight and the minutes the line really runs — not from the machine's best-case speed. The capacity article shows the arithmetic, including the allowance for changeovers, cleaning and stops.
5. Choose the Packaging Material With the Film Supplier
Barrier, appearance, recyclability and sealability have to fit together. The film or pouch supplier and the machine supplier should agree on the structure, because the machine's sealing temperature, pressure and dwell time are set to it.
6. Count the Formats and Changeovers
How many pack sizes, products and prints will run on the line, and how often do they change? A line with one product needs little flexibility; a co-packer with many SKUs needs quick format changes and recipe-driven settings.
7. Look Upstream and Downstream
The packaging machine sits between the product feed and the end of the line. Feeding, buffering, checkweighing, metal detection, case packing and palletizing decide whether the line reaches its capacity. Specify them together.
8. Check Hygiene, Cleaning and Safety
Dry or wet area, allergen changes, cleaning time between products: these decide construction and design. Guarding, interlocks and the documentation required in the destination market belong in the specification from the start.
9. Test With Your Own Product and Material
For a new product or a new film, a test with your own product and packaging material is the most reliable way to confirm the configuration before it is fixed.
Next step
Evaluate the process on your product.
The correct automation decision depends on your product, line layout and target process.