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Multipacked snacks stack like bricks

Snack food maker Utz Quality Foods, Inc. takes a minimalist approach to multipacking single-serve potato chip packs with a brick-shaped format that displays beautifully in the store.

The BalePack is a compact yet sturdy multipack that displays nicely at retail.
The BalePack is a compact yet sturdy multipack that displays nicely at retail.

A new breed of multipacker for snack food packaging has been developed and commercialized at Utz Quality Foods, Inc., a family-owned snack food manufacturer out of Hanover, PA. Built by Kliklok-Woodman and called the Vantage BalePack, the system is used to wrap six 1-oz or 1⁄2-oz bags of single-serve potato chips in clear film. Consumers, says Utz vice president of manufacturing Paul Schaum, are really drawn to this new format. “It’s dramatically increased units sold in the stores it’s gone to,” says Schaum.


It’s also brought labor savings, he points out. “What it replaced was basically a bread bag that we filled manually or semi-automatically. For awhile we used a plastic bread bag tab to close it, though more recently we were heat sealing it closed. Either way, it was suboptimal, not just in production but on shelf, too. The BalePack looks so much better on the shelf. And the store-door salesperson has an easier time with it because the previous formats were more difficult to stack.”


Utz and Kliklok-Woodman have a long history together, and conversations about the BalePack go back almost three years. Patent-pending technology lets the machine enclose individual bags in an optimally compact package whose brick-like shape makes it easy for Utz sales people to stack packs neatly and attractively on retail store shelves.


The compact form of the BalePack means that Utz gains sustainable packaging points, too, because less packaging material is used for secondary packaging. Just how much less becomes really noticeable when the BalePack is examined beside other six-count multipacks used for single-serve salty snacks like potato chips. The lap seal, for example, that turns flat film into a continuous tube on the BalePack equipment involves considerably less film than the fin seal used on some other multipacks. Also designed with source reduction in mind are the end seals—again, the amount of material that has to be folded and formed into a heat seal is visibly minimalized compared to other approaches.


Direct link to vf/f/s


Kliklok-Woodman designed the BalePack so that it could be linked directly to the discharge of a vertical form/fill/seal system or used in an off-line fashion. Utz has opted for the direct link, as the BalePack sits immediately downstream from the Kliklok-Woodman P3c continuous-motion bagger that was installed about a year ago.

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