Secondary Packaging for Packaged Products

Jerry Buckley
South Central Regional Sales Manager
BluePrint Automation (BPA)

What new developments do you see happening in product handling equipment? 

As consumers are searching more for “environmentally friendly” packaging, more emphasis is now being placed on finding a Retail Ready Package (RRP) that does not appear to be “over-packaged”, but still protects the products during shipment.  Therefore, wraparound packaging is becoming much more popular due to its flexibility to handle a variety of RRP style packages.

Are new systems able to create more complicated carton types? What about shelf-ready display packages? 

As mentioned above, Wraparound Case Packing equipment can provide a variety of Shelf Ready Packages that still provide good shipping protection, but also good display properties with openings to see the products.  These include 2-piece display trays with “hoods”, where lids are easily removed from display trays at the stores, and 3-quarter style cases (like “shoulder” cases) that display the products inside the package, but still have strong corners for case stacking strength / protection on pallets.

Is robotics becoming more popular because of its flexibility and simplicity in automating manual packaging?

Yes, Robotics are absolutely becoming more popular in the baking industry due to their ability to pack a variety of products in many unconventional pack patterns that can’t be done by traditional packaging equipment.  Also, Robotic Vision and Robotic Programming is becoming easier to understand and work with.  Plus Robot pricing is becoming more affordable, and as packaging labor is becoming more difficult to find, Robots are greatly increasing in popularity. Also, as Vision Guided Robotics can easily handle randomly oriented products, less mechanical upstream equipment is needed to organize and orient products from an upstream cooling process.

Is end-of-arm tooling for picking and handling food products and packages continuing to advance?

Yes, there has been many advances in Robotic end of arm tooling for the handling of delicate products.  These advances include end of tooling that can sense grip pressure to know if a product can be picked just like the human hand does. These EOAT’s also adapt easily to variable size products just like the human hand as well. 

What innovative product handling equipment­­­­­­­­­­­­ has your company introduced?

One of BPA’s product advances has been in robot tooling using Cyclone pucks to create vacuum by blowing air instead of through suction.  No filters are needed, which is revolutionary for the bakery industry where flour dust and flaky products are a concern.  Another has been our development of the Spider 300v case, carton and tray packing system that utilizes vision guided delta robots to pattern form arriving products onto a pick belt for robot placement into cases, trays, or cartons either in a vertical or horizontal pack pattern.  The Spider 300v allows for random product arrival at high speeds and provides great flexibility in packaging formats.

What technological advances do you see coming soon?

There seems to be more and more interest in utilizing Collaborative Robots to do simple repetitive processes (where labor is difficult to find) as they don’t require guarding, so they take up very little space.  Plus, they are very, very easy to teach/program the actions desired.   However, currently these robots are not known for handling high-speed applications but, as these types of Robots develop, I see them being used more in production facilities in the future.