Adapting to the changing needs of the bakery industry

Paola Fraschini marketing manager at Cama spoke to Tennille Aron about the ever-changing needs of the bakery industry when it comes to packaging.

Q: What bakery categories do you see growing the fastest?

The largest growth in bakery has been the ‘free from’ sector with ‘no-gluten’ being a reason for new market entrants and start-up producers looking to gain share in the bakery sector. In general, the bakery industry is promoting healthy products with low-sugar and low-fat content.

Q: What is the most challenging request that you have received from a bakery customer to help them package their bakery products?

We receive many requests to automate innovative packaging designs, which are normally handpicked first. In every project, Cama supported the customer with their knowledge and experience. Targets can be different, and we can summarise them into different macro-categories, namely:

• Handle a high number of products per minutes

• Deliver a custom and innovative packing solution developed by the customer’s marketing departments

• Fit the packaging machine in an existing building with limited space

• Support the customer in the engineering phase of the projects

For all these needs, Cama is able to support their customers and deliver the best solution.

Q: What role does packaging equipment have in helping meet the need for longer shelf-life for bakery products?

Cama’s range of equipment is around paper-based packaging, which is less about barrier properties and more about the structural side for sleeves,cartons and cases that are designed to protect the product in transit so that it arrives at the consumer in good condition. This is a pre-requisite even before shelf-life concerns are addressed. Cama’ssolutions are helping manufacturers to achieve plastic reduction targets and make efficiency gains. In addition, the wide range of shelf-ready packaging covered by the Cama machine is able to provide all the solutions for a shelf-ready pack.

Furthermore, the capability of Cama to have developed their own robotic system allows them to cover the requirements coming from the bakery industry, which now requires a flexible productionable to supply different packing configurations flavours in a short time. With their fast and automatic change over systems, Cama machines can easily meet these requests.

Q5: What has been the contributing factor to the continued success of the Cama Group?

Through the years, the Cama Group staff hasgrown up to 350 employees, including highly-

skilled engineers and technicians, sales consultants, sales engineers, and their own packaging consulting department. With more than 40 years’ experience in the design and testing of packaging paperboard and cardboard, the Cama packaging department is available to help customers achieve high efficiency, improve sustainability and reduce material costs. In addition, the group annually invests 5% of sales to research and development, to be able to offer its’ customers innovative packaging solutions. The company’s outstanding packaging knowledge, combined with a unique machine range (packaging division) and robotic loading units (robotic division), allows Cama to propose complete lines starting from the handling of primary

packages, such as flow-wraps, bags,and trays, to the supply of final carton/corrugated packaging ready for palletising.

To find out more about Cama’s bakerysolutions, request your free bakery brochure byemailing marketing@camagroup.com

CAMA – www.cama.com USS Pactech – www.usspactech.co.za