Secondary Packaging

Retorted food pouches ready for market push

Knauss and Esskay introduce foods in retorted pouches without foil for retail. StarKist Seafood sells a foil-based pouch of tuna to foodservice accounts. Will others follow suit?

January 31, 2000

Industries: Page 743

Conveying & accumulation

Contract packager blends vf/f/s systems

Unusual integrated blending scale systems enable a California contract packager to fill as many as nine different individually quick-frozen vegetables into a single bag.

January 31, 2000

Sustainability

Mystery of the missing PMNs

The FDA and the pharmaceutical industry are both scratching their figurative heads over packaging suppliers’ apparent hesitancy to use the agency’s new 120-day packaging approval program.

December 31, 1999

Conveying & accumulation

Supplier news: Appointments, promotions

UCB Films Inc. (Smyrna, GA): Andy Newman, president.—AGR Intl., Inc. (Butler, PA): Henry Dimmick, Jr., CEO; Robert Cowden, vp, sales and service.—American National Can Group, Inc.

December 31, 1999

Consumer packaged goods

Supplier news: Domestic acquisitions, agreements

Westvaco Corp. (New York, NY) has announced a definitive agreement to acquire Mebane Packaging Group, Inc. (Mebane, NC). —TricorBraun (St.

December 31, 1999

Flexibles

Supplier news: Relocations, expansions

Videojet Systems Intl., Inc. (Wood Dale, IL) has changed its name to Marconi Data Systems Inc. The name change supports the recent rebranding of Videojet’s parent group from GEC to Marconi plc.—Power Packaging (St.

December 31, 1999

Controls & Machine Components

Thermo Solutions: Vacuum-insulated containers

Thermo Solutions™ (Minneapolis, MN) has introduced square vacuum-insulated panel (VIP) containers. The EverKool Express™ and the EverKool™ VIP allow frozen food to retain a sub-zero temperature for 36 hr at a consistent 85°F ambient room temperature.

December 31, 1999

Feeding/inserting/unscrambling

Vac-U-Max: Powder conveying system

Vac-U-Max (Belleville, NJ) introduces the Model PB pneumatic conveying system for dry powders. Through a 48”-L wand and vacuum hoses, product is vacuumed from drums into feeders equipped with a discharge spout positioned above either a primary package or a tank on a filling machine.

December 31, 1999

Filling/capping, dry

Filler for thick materials

The FA Model filler from Optima Maschinenfabrik (Schwäbisch Hall, Germany) can be used for filling powdered and lumpy bulk material into rigid containers.

December 31, 1999

Labeling

Food pasteurization facility planned for late 2000

SteriGenics Intl. (Memphis, TN) expects a new “state-of-the-art” X-ray food pasteurization plant to be operational in Bridgeport, NJ, by the fourth quarter of this year.

December 31, 1999

Controls & Machine Components

Communicating: Still a challenge in 21st-century technologies

We may have successfully overcome some of the minor inconveniences caused by the calendar rollover into 2000, but many of us still struggle with the many ways technology lets us communicate with each other.

December 31, 1999

Dairy

Pushing meals to market

Breakaway Foods™ is touting its new line of paperboard cylinder-packed IncrEdibles™ portable meals as “a revolutionary new way for consumers to enjoy their favorite foods, and the ultimate meal for people on the go.” IncrEdibles are microwaveable meals packaged in a printed, spiral-wound paperboard cylinder that becomes a “self-server,” according to the company, when consumers push up a plastic stick that’s inserted into the cylinder’s bottom.

December 31, 1999

Spirits/liquors

Robotics is hot

Third-quarter statistics show that the North American robotics industry is having its best year ever, says the Robotics Industries Assn. (Ann Arbor, MI).

December 31, 1999