Feeding/inserting/unscrambling

Kerk Motion Products: Slide for linear applications

Kerk Motion Products introduces its RGS™ 10000 Slide. Designed for linear-motion applications, it’s especially suitable for applications in the packaging field, including plastic bottle unscramblers, shrink bundlers, stretch banders, tray shrink-packaging systems, wraparound case packers, secondary orienters, and canister desiccant feeders.

January 31, 2005

Leaders (UNIVERSAL TAXONOMY PW): Page 1486

Controls & Machine Components

Mitsubishi Electronics Americ: Mitsubishi Electronics Americ: Servo motors

Mitsubishi Electric’s MR-J3 servo motors offer a smaller size and increased performance, ideal for packaging machinery. Other benefits include advanced vibration control, higher speeds and higher accuracies, and increased compatibility.

January 31, 2005

Controls & Machine Components

Eurotherm: Eurotherm: Data management system

Eurotherm, a unit of Invensys plc, has announced the release of a new Advanced Screen Builder feature in the 5000 Series Data Management System. This feature enables 24 custom user screens to be created and viewed at the instrument’s touch screen.

January 31, 2005

Additives, coatings & inks

Report ponders plastics pricing issues

Higher feedstock costs and strong export demand drove polyethylene prices up 22¢/lb last year, according to a January 6, 2005 Market Update from The Plastics Exchange.

January 31, 2005

Coding, Printing & Labeling

The Packaging Pushback Club

Among the more regrettable developments in the ongoing saga of RFID implementation is the emergence of what I like to call the Packaging Pushback Club. You know them.

January 31, 2005

Blisters/clamshells/skin packaging

Post Pack Expo observations on machinery developments

Chinna Chinnakaruppan, manager of project engineering at Schering-Plough’s Kenilworth, NJ, plant, talks about recent trends in packaging machinery.

January 31, 2005

Coding, Printing & Labeling

MIT's RFID field probe

The Auto-ID Labs of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, MA, has developed an inexpensive field probe that emulates an RFID tag but yields much more robust information than simple trial-and-error, pass or fail testing.

January 31, 2005

Closures

Spell-binding design

Lily Sweet, the latest creation by the perfume artist Ulric de Varens, premiered in its stylish flacon by Gerresheimer at Luxe Pack in Monaco this past October.

January 31, 2005

Secondary Packaging

Sites

New or enhanced Web sites

January 31, 2005

Conveying & accumulation

Companies

ID Technology has been signed as exclusive national distributor for MASCA Marking and Coding Laser Systems. ID Technology has also added an RFID business unit to its overall operations.

January 31, 2005

Coding, Printing & Labeling

No label change, say two juice makers

Coca-Cola North America, manufacturers of Minute Maid orange juice, and Tropicana, a subsidiary of PepsiCo, Inc., rejected a call by the Florida Department of Citrus to change the labeling on packages of “light” orange juice after studies showed consumers were confused about the juice content of the products.

January 31, 2005

Labels

Uniform compliance date

The U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Food Safety and Inspection Service has established January 1, 2008, as the uniform compliance date for new food labeling regulations issued between January 1, 2005, and December 31, 2006.

January 31, 2005

Additives, coatings & inks

The power of numbers, and neighbors

As we struggle to write “2005” instead of “2004” on our checks, I’m struck by how important numbers are to our lives and our jobs.

January 31, 2005