A switch last September from 5-gal plastic pails to bag-in-box packaging has greatly reduced the number of failed packages at Haliburton Intl. Corp. of Rancho Cucamonga, CA.
The firm is a supplier of dozens of food ingredients—such as chile pepper purees, anchovy paste, and dried or pureed vegetables—used by foodservice institutions and food processors alike. According to company president Ian Schenkel, seal integrity was a real problem with the plastic pails. The hot-filled product was shelf-stable in the pail as long as the lid was sealed tight. But too often lids would come loose. With some products, says Schenkel, “the failure rate was up around 10 percent.”
Now in use are premade high-barrier bags from Scholle Corp. (Northlake, IL) filled on an Astepo Model BF filler. Based in Italy, Astepo is represented in North America by VR Food Equipment (Penn Yan, NY). Haliburton’s pumpable products range from smooth to particulated to highly viscous, but the Astepo system’s mass flowmeter adjusts readily to these differing densities. Accuracy is greatly improved, too, compared to the semi-automatic pail-filling that was done in the past.
