Pouch sealing machines for Lawrence Road

A seal that has to hold a claim

In consumer goods the seal is a legal boundary as much as a physical one. Inside it, the weight and the date on the label are yours to stand behind.

A continuous band sealer suits pouch work because the pouch moves through it rather than being placed and held, which means the seal is the same length and the same width on every pack regardless of who is feeding it.

The common failure is product in the seal line. Powder, oil or a stray granule between the films makes a seal that looks complete and is not, and it opens days later in a distributor's godown.

Fill below the seal line, wipe the mouth of the pouch if the product is oily, and check the first pack of every batch by pulling it apart. A seal that peels cleanly was never a seal.

Date, batch and the coder that runs with the sealer

Nearly everything packed here carries a date, and the date has to be right, legible and in the same place on every pack.

The practical failure is a coder that is set at the start of a shift and not checked again. A smudged or half-printed date is treated as no date at all by an inspector, and by a retailer taking a return.

Check the code at the start, after every reel change, and after every stoppage. It takes seconds and it is the single most common reason a consignment is refused.

Where a pouch is printed with a date panel, use it. A code printed over artwork is harder to read and looks like an afterthought.

The outer carton, and a distributor's godown

Pouches go into cartons and cartons go to distributors, where they are stacked higher than anybody intended.

A carton of pouches is soft — it takes its strength from what is inside it, and pouches give it none. That makes stack height the limit, and it makes strapping worthwhile even where the carton looks strong enough.

Print the stack limit on the carton. Distributors follow it more often than people expect, and it moves the argument to before the damage rather than after.

Where product is heavy — flour, rice, liquids — a semi automatic carton sealer with a strap after it is the ordinary answer, in that order.

Buying for a food unit

Two questions decide most of it: what the product does to a seal, and what your cleaning does to a machine. Both are answered with a sample rather than a specification.

Send the pouch and the product where you can. A film that seals beautifully in a demonstration can behave differently with your own powder in the way.

These are PackForge models, so supply, installation and service are from PackForge Industries, and the quotation will say so.