4 Categories of Popular Packaging Machines Used in Ready Meal Industry
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In response to inflation, consumers are cutting back on dining out, making sales harder to achieve. To attract these cost-conscious customers, foodservice providers must enhance their premium offerings to show added value and justify higher prices. The ready-meal market has adapted to these changes by offering budget-friendly indulgent options that cater to current consumer preferences, including sustainable meal solutions and home-cooked-style alternatives. [1]
Ready meal has gained it popularity so thanks to these trends, and so as the food service and manufacturing companies have to keep pace with the evolving and increasing market in terms of both productivity and quality. To achieve such purposes, automation is indispensable and it is essential to acquire and install both processing and packaging machines to boost their production.
We introduce the recently most popular kinds of food packaging machines designed for ready meal industries which can be used either as standalone equipment as well as to connect with each other to form an integrated packaging line to fully automate the production and packaging processes.
What are the Common Packaging Forms for Ready Meals?
The packaging process for prepared and ready meals involves several forms of packaging ranging from primary to secondary and tertiary procedures.
Initially, pre-formed ready meal trays or thermoformed trays are sealed with a film to ensure the freshness and hygiene of the food. The process of apply film lid usually involves the heat sealing technologies.
Ready meal packaging samples
Credit: ELITER Packaging Machinery
Following the previous process, which is referred to as the primary packaging, sleeve wrapping provides additional protection and enhances brand recognition. The final process that groups these separate selling units are boxed into multiple individually packaged meals for convenient transportation and storage.
Tray Sealer – Sealing Machine for Pre-formed Ready Meal Trays
A tray sealer can either be a standalone semi-automatic and commercial unit or an inline automatic machine, but basically they all deal with the sealing of pre-formed trays.
Semi-Automatic and Inline Automatic Tray Sealers
Credit: ILPRA
Tray sealers are typically integrated with some unique features and functions that ensure the preservation of the products contained within the tray and that distinguish them from the the rest of primary packaging machines.
One of the most important functions are vacuum and gas flush systems to remove air from the tray and replace it with an inert gas, which helps in extending the shelf life of the product. The environment and ambient created within the sealed tray is referred to as the modified atmosphere.
Some inline tray sealers are equipped with advanced smart infeed and timing technologies, known as the CPS system. This system allows trays to flow continuously into the machine in a timed manner. The conveyor belt automatically spaces the trays, which are transported seamlessly into the sealing mold. This process is achieved through electronic interpolation of the jaws with the conveyor belts, ensuring a smooth and uninterrupted operation, similar to how a smart conveyor system works.
Thermoformer
Different to a tray sealer that uses pre-fomred trays, thermoformers create packaging by moulding plastic sheets into containers. You may find more information about thermoformers in our previous blog.
Thermoformer
Credit: ILPRA
Cartoning & Sleeving Machines
Cartoning of Ready Meals
Credit: ELITER Packaging Machinery
Sealed ready meal trays still need to be packed by cartoning and sleeving machines to provide additional protection during transportation, enhance product presentation and branding, meet regulatory requirements, and offer more space for labelling and consumer information.
Ready meal companies can opt for rigid folding cartons to keep their sealed trays intact and protected. In the case that they would like to achieve much sense of design and sustainability, cardboard sleeve could be a better choice to ready meal’s secondary packaging.
Sleeving and Cartoning Machines for Ready Meals
Credit: ELITER Packaging Machinery
Case Packer
Moving ready meals from the production facility towards groceries around the country. Playing the essential role here is the rigid packaging of corrugated carton cases that can withstand the impacts and shocks that may happen during the movement and logistics along the supply chain.
Critical end-of-line equipment for ready meal industry to automate such rigid packaging is a case packer that can stack multiple ready meal trays wrapped by sleeve or kept in folding cartons and load them into corrugated cases. You will be able to acquire more information about how a case packer works and the different forms of corrugated cases such kind of machines can handle by reading our another blog.
Looking for Solutions to Fully Automate your Ready Meal Packaging?
ÉLITER Packaging Machinery has been growing in the field of ready meal industry and has had multiple successful installations with references and clients among Europe and APAC regions to implement end-of-line automations for cartoning, sleeving and case packing.
Together with our material handling systems like racetrack collators, pick-and-place solutions, washdown and smart conveyor systems, ÉLITER Packaging Machinery will be at your disposal to incorporate to your existing upstream processing and primary packaging equipment. The end-line extends your automate packaging processes.
To acquire further information, please send your request to info@eliter-packaging.com
