Packaging News takes a look at this month’s PPMA Total Show 2022. It’s another packed event with a wide range of exhibitors showcasing the very latest processing and packaging technology that’s on the market.
Processing and packaging machinery event PPMA Total Show 2022, returns to the NEC this month, providing a platform for innovation and live demonstrations of production machinery.
The three-day exhibition, which runs from 27-29 September, will also act as a central hub for networking, expert knowledge and information share as well as present a rich showground of discovery for visitors seeking new solutions to enhance business performance.
Comprising over 350 exhibitor stands, representing 2,000 brands and incorporating major exhibition brands Pakex and Interphex, visitors to Hall 5 will have access to a collection of production machinery and smart manufacturing equipment all under one roof. Showcasing the very latest in production-efficient technology, robotic and vision systems combined with state-of-the-art materials, containers and packaging design, the event caters for visitors from a wide range of sectors, including food and beverage, pharmaceutical, toiletries, building supplies, pet care, FMCG and contract packing.
Visitors to the show will also benefit from a daily programme of educational and opinion-led presentations hosted at the onsite seminar theatre. Centred around the theme ‘The Future Of…’, the schedule of informative interactive discussions, debate, presentations and workshops will be delivered by respected industry experts who will share their knowledge, provide inspiration and offer their own insights into the future of the industry. Ambassadors from PPMA Business Education Skills and Training (PPMA BEST) will be on hand during the show, engaging with visitors and presenting the charity’s pathway for supporting young people developing careers in engineering within the processing and packaging, robotics, and industrial vision industries.
PPMA Total Show 2022 will also play host to the PPMA Group Awards. Celebrating the best in machinery innovation, smart manufacturing and business acumen, the awards will be presented to winning and highly recommended companies during the final day of the show.
Richard Little, PPMA show director says: “We know our visitor audience wants to get close to the latest technologies – to touch and try, to discover new production-enhancing solutions and to speak one-to-one with product and applications experts from all aspects of production – and this is exactly what PPMA Total delivers.
“We are immensely proud of PPMA Total Show’s long and successful history and the fact that this will be out 34th show clearly demonstrates we deliver a winning formula for both exhibitors and our visitor audience alike. This year’s event will be no exception, and I look forward to welcoming visitors when the show opens its doors again, walking the aisles, networking with peers and gaining inspiration from all the new technologies and live demonstrations on display.”
Brillopak will debut the multi-material handling capabilities of its new high-speed Tray and Punnet Paker. The machine automatically packs trays and punnets into retail cases. It can operate at a speed of 150 punnets-per-minute machine and combines specialist robotics with patented servo-driven end effectors and then deploys them in a pick-and-place operation. “As well as dealing with the pliability of the thin plastic punnets, customers have asked us to cater for cardboard variants too, both of which they want packed at speed and in neatly presented configurations,” says Peter Newman, technical director at Brillopak. “Dealing with any of these features in isolation is hard enough but when you’re challenged with addressing all of them, simultaneously, it becomes much more interesting. Fortunately, we have some superb engineers here and we were more than up to the task.”
Endoline Automation will highlight what it claims are the sustainable features of its end-of-line packaging systems and eco-friendly sealing options at PPMA Total 2022. Responding to calls for sustainable sealing solutions which reduce the use of plastic, Endoline will showcase its 248 Fully Automatic High Speed Case Erector, which has been engineered to seal cases with hot melt glue rather than tape. While utilising glue sealing alternatives can significantly reduce plastic consumption for manufactures, it also helps drive down material waste as two square inches of adhesive glue will close an average size box compared with over 200 square inches of tape. Endoline will also highlight recyclable Kraft tape as an additional eco-friendly sealing alternative.
The Festo stand focuses on key applications for the process and packaging sector. These include innovative process valve controls, servo-controlled flow wrapping and a new solution for controlling web tension with dancing rollers. An OEM balancer is introduced to make it easy for designers to integrate all the counter-balance controls they need with their own mechanical structures.
A Delta 3000 flow wrapper with automatic infeed will take centre stage on IMA Ilapak’s stand, demonstrating how food producers can reduce their line-side labour requirement whilst reliably and efficiently producing hermetically sealed MAP packs from latest generation films. “Two of the topics on everyone’s lips are workforce shortages and sustainable packaging; the equipment we have on show illustrates how we can help our customers to address both challenges. Automating the infeed of the flow wrapper is a relatively simple step that eliminates the need for manual loading. It is a starting point and we are hoping that at PPMA it will also be a talking point for discussions about how we, as part of the IMA Group and FLX HUB, can work with our customers to implement labour-saving automation technologies at every stage of the packaging workflow,” says Tony McDonald, sales and marketing director at Ilapak UK.
Food packaging equipment specialist Ishida will be showcasing its packing lines to cater for leaner and more efficient factory floors. The equipment on display from Ishida’s multihead weigher, checkweigher and x-ray inspection system ranges will demonstrate the company’s technical expertise to help companies achieve their production and quality targets. The company will show two models developed for specialist applications: the 14-head CCW-RV-214W-GS is designed to weigh fragile products such as biscuits and confectionery, reducing product breakages by up to 20%; and the six-head Ishida CCW-R2-106WB Fresh Food Weigher (FFW) can handle sticky fresh and bruise-sensitive products. Ishida’s quality control solutions will be represented by the company’s IX-EN-4093-S, a high-performance entry-level X-ray inspection; and the DACS-G-F015 checkweigher, developed in particular for high-speed production lines.
A single demonstration line running on the Omron aiming to reveal how a dynamic manufacturing operation – in this case filling – can see dramatic efficiency and uptime improvements from the deployment of AI in at least two areas: intelligent machine control; and fault detection and remediation. The first of Omron’s two areas of digital intelligence is focused at machine-level, through its Sysmac controller with edge-based AI. With filling handled by an i4 SCARA robot, the small bottling line will demonstrate how this technology can deliver real-time trend analysis and alerts on the fly. “The first step is to work in partnership with the customer to establish what data is being extracted from the line, cut out the ‘noise’ and focus on actionable data,” says Omron’s UK marketing manager Stuart Coulton.
Soken Engineering will be at this year’s show, launching a range of heat-sealing packing system targeting food on-the-go applications. A new three-in-one Heat-Sealing System seals packs of sandwiches, wraps and salads with only the need for a tool change. The range includes: level one machines targeting for small cafes which want to seal a single pack at a time; level two machines, which seal up to four packs at the same time, pitched for caterers supplying mobile vans and local shops; and level three intermediate automated systems, which can output up to 48 packs per minute – designed for medium sized businesses such as airline caterers or large garden centre chains.
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