Conveying & accumulation

Seneca sets its sights on plastic

Seneca Foods was among the first to convert from glass to hot-fillable plastic jars for applesauce. Now it fills both glass and plastic containers on essentially the same line.

January 31, 1999

Labeling: Page 183

Sustainability

Bottle-to-bottle PET recycling beckons in Germany

German mineral water and soft drink marketer Rosbacher installs a first-of-its-kind stretch blow molder and seeks to popularize closed-loop recycling of PET beverage containers.

January 31, 1999

Filling/capping, liquid & viscous

Anheuser-Busch operators monitor 'mirrored' lines

Packaging equipment operators on Houston's two new bottling lines evolve from 'machine watchers' to 'process monitors.'

January 31, 1999

Flexible packaging

HDPE-bottled dairy beverages 'milk' 90-day shelf life

Canadian dairy products marketer Natrel is the first North American user of an ultra-high-temperature processing/aseptic filling line. The process permits Natrel to launch single-serve milks and shakes with a 90-day refrigerated shelf life.

January 31, 1999

Coding, Printing & Labeling

SmithKline software simplifies specs management

Packaging specifications software helps SmithKline Beecham tame paperwork associated with an unwieldy packaging component inventory.

January 31, 1999

Tamper-evident machinery

FDA 'tampers' with gel capsule labels

The Food & Drug Administration capped its regulatory efforts to make two-piece gelatin OTC capsules harder to tamper with by requiring manufacturers to seal capsules and to use at least one "tamper-evident" packaging feature.

January 31, 1999

Coding, Printing & Labeling

Supplier news: International agreements

ITW Auto-Sleeve (Twinsburg, OH) has signed a "Technology Agreement" with PDC Europe (Montdidier, France), enabling Auto-Sleeve stretch labels to be applied by PDC Europe's new high-speed labelers.

January 31, 1999

Coding, Printing & Labeling

Coder delivers healthy benefits for U.K. vet lab

Faster coding and clearer print on each label enable Veterinary Laboratories Agency to speed the supply of tuberculin to veterinary establishments throughout the United Kingdom.

January 31, 1999

Coding, Printing & Labeling

In brief

New FDA Administrator Dr. Jane Henney is being urged by leading food industry groups to see that food issues are given sufficient attention. Issues needing resolution include irradiation, national uniformity in food regulations and labeling, regulation of functional foods, and other labeling reforms...Manufacturers of hearing aids seeking to add a claim for performance in noisy environments to the package labeling are no longer required by FDA, in most cases, to submit a new 510(k) premarket notification.

January 31, 1999

Labels

Labelers deliver quick changeover

Neways' p-s labeling equipment accommodates a wide variety of containers, speeds product changeover by 30% and reduces rejects ten-fold.

December 31, 1998

Sustainability

Meadow Gold milks coding machinery

It wasn't too long ago that a one-line, 12-digit code was all that Southern Foods was able to hot-stamp onto its one-gal, high-density polyethylene jugs of Meadow Gold-brand milk.

December 31, 1998

Coding, Printing & Labeling

Just-in-time cards from label printers

Button wholesaler buys off-the-shelf color thermal-transfer label printers to print cardstock for more than 7ꯠ SKUs. Machines permit print runs from one dozen up to 1괌 dozen cards.

December 31, 1998

Coding, Printing & Labeling

Warning to states: no warning labels

At the top of the food industry's 1999 congressional agenda will be a bill outlawing most state food labeling laws. Legislation that pre-empts state authority is always controversial.

December 31, 1998