Touted as an alternative to zipper- and slider-style closures, Easy Snap is co-marketed in North America by SIG Doboy, Inc.-Easy Snap Division (New Richmond, WI) and Presto Products Company's Fresh-Lock Zipper Business Unit (Appleton, WI). Presto is a business of Alcoa Consumer Products.
Graphics on the front of the Herr's bag show two hands opening the bag, using a pinching and pulling motion. Easy Snap is designed so that both children and the elderly can easily open the bag. To close the bag, the consumer simply presses the Easy Snap seam together. There's no need to press zipper components together across the entire face of the bag.
Introduced at Pack Expo 2000, the patented Easy Snap includes a rigid closure feature that gives a distinctive "snap" feel and sound to assure the consumer the package is properly closed.
The closure system includes SIG Doboy's EasyForm™ material laminated to the inside layer of the package's film as it unwinds during bagmaking. The film continues to a sealing jaw where the heated material is shaped to create the Easy Snap closure, which the vendors say includes an "arrowhead-and-receiver" locking mechanism. Easy Snap can be formed in-line on either new or retrofitted vertical form/fill/seal machinery.
At Snaxpo, the suppliers demonstrated an ESV 2000 In-Line Reclosable Packaging System equipped with two separate unwinds, one for the printed film, the other for the unprinted EasyForm material. That equipment was paired with a vf/f/s machine from Hayssen (Duncan, SC), a Barry-Wehmiller company. PW was told that Nottingham, PA-based Herr Foods Inc. will install an ESV 2000 in April to produce the pretzel packs with the new reclosable feature.
Last year, Cambridge, MA-based New England Confectionery Co. introduced its 4 1/2-oz NECCO Ultra mints in a bag fitted with the Easy Snap system (see PW, p. 10). That package was awarded an AmeriStar by the Institute of Packaging Professionals. --JB, ES
