Soup cups go private label (sidebar)

While the new soup cup line allows Ontario Foods to pursue new markets, the firm hasn't exactly forgotten about its established businesses either. One of those is pan-style stuffing mix, consisting of bagged bread cubes and a pouch of seasonings combined in a folding carton. Until March of this year, Ontario was unable to package its 110-g bags of bread cubes any faster than 12/min. Now it's getting 30 bags/min from a vertical form/fill/seal system and a Selectacom 21 combination scale. Both were supplied by Triangle Machinery Co. (Chicago, IL). Most often Ontario will use this new equipment to package bread cubes using a roll-fed lamination of polyethylene and ethylene vinyl acetate. Sometimes the system will run powdered cocoa in a paper/polyethylene/foil lamination. Such product handles better on an auger filler, so the firm mounted the combination scale on a track. When cocoa is to be run, the combination scale is pushed back and out of the way and an auger filler is swung into place.