Portion Packs – Small but Mighty

Portion packages for cookies and crackers are taking the market by storm. Consumers favor smaller convenience packs when snacking on-the-go or saving favorite treats for later. However, many manufacturers find it difficult to adjust their production lines. Some assume the cost of automation for smaller packs will be more costly due to higher production speeds.

It is time to reconsider. Here are some tips on how to employ “biscuit on pile” packaging for stacked cookies and crackers:

Adapt production easily in line with market success – with scalable systems
Consider scalable systems starting with hand-fed wrappers and manual cartoning or case packing. All manual packaging steps can be automated at a later stage.

Flexibility thanks to fast and reproducible changeovers
Promotions, seasonal fluctuations and ever-changing consumer preferences, coupled with intense competition on supermarket shelves, all require fast changes in pack styles, sizes or number of biscuits in the pack.

Protection for brittle cookies and crackers
Consider flat handling for sandwich cookies or biscuits with toppings or irregular shapes. Any other type of biscuit can be processed on edge with vibratory distribution. One of the advantages of vibratory distribution is a three to five minutes buffer functionality to compensate for variances in product supply. Watch out for extraction pushers with high acceleration or packaging steps, requiring product to fall or fly without any support, increasing the risk of product damage. Gentle product extraction should use controlled acceleration and continuous product flow to protect biscuits, as well as enable higher production speeds.

Product differentiation for success at the point of sale
Having the right partner for packaging solutions on your side will enable you to serve retailers with different pack styles. These range from flow wraps all the way to shelf-ready wrap-around cases with peel-away sections offering more advertising space.

Operator friendliness
Think about machine designs that are easy to access, with forming sets that are simple to thread, tool-less changeovers and which eliminate points for potential operator error.

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TechTalks Discussion

The product packed in aluminum foil went rancid
Cookies that have sesame and wheat germ are packed in aluminum foil and went rancid in just 3-4 months. any solutions towards this? should I introduce nitrogen packaging or there some technique to treat these ingredients?

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I came across the recent article on Total Cost of Ownership on packaging machinery, very interesting article indeed, however, it did not show clearly how you can evaluate between two suppliers which one has the best option given a more complex real-life situation?

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What kind of automation can be done in the biscuit packaging section right from the oven till the end of the line (packaging)?

Regarding the shelflife
But the biscuits are getting soft after a month of packaging. Though its life is 6-8 months. So is there any chemical I can use to increase its shelf life?

Packaging machines for biscuits
Which machines are the best packaging machines for biscuit packaging keeping in view less workers and machine automatization?

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How can we determine the correct material combination of laminates ( Type of the laminates & thickness of the layers) are being supplied by the suppliers?

Eg : 20 micron BOPP + 25 micron MCPP