14 minute read
interpack
MAJOR FIELDS OF ACTION AT INTERPACK
Libby Munford caught up with Christian Traumann, group president, MULTIVAC ahead of interpack to hear the perspective of a leading provider of packaging solutions on the main trends it expects to explore on the show floor across the food, life science and healthcare sectors.
Christian Traumann
LM: Multivac has spotlighted sustainability, digitalization, and automation as the main focuses for its stand at interpack. Can you talk me through each trend – what are the main challenges and demands from your customers in each category, and how are you innovating to meet these?
CT: Sustainability: The EU’s Plastics Strategy, as well as national legislation deduced from it, are driving developments in the market, through which fully functioning recycling loops are to be implemented, and also alternative materials are developed, which can better meet the requirements of a closedloop system. By using different material and packaging concepts, manufacturers can make an important contribution to meeting the current market demands with regard to the implementation of a circular economy.
In order to implement sustainable packaging concepts in the food industry, it is essential to view the entire added value chain holistically, from the manufacturing stage through the logistics chain and right up to use by the consumer. In addition to the introduction of closed recycling loops and the reuse of plastic packs, it is also productive to look at concepts for reducing the consumption of plastics in the production of packs, as well as the options for using alternative packaging materials.
Digitalization: Digitalization is an important key to mastering the increasing demands on packing in regard to cost efficiency and sustainability. Today MULTIVAC is already offering companies groundbreaking solutions with a wide range of tools for increasing machine availability and efficiency, and these can be implemented as required on a step-by-step basis. Viewed over the long term, digitalization offers companies great potential, insofar as packaging machines and even complete production lines can be continually optimized through a self-learning process.
Automation: An ever increasing number of fresh and processed food products have to be manufactured and packed. But it has become more difficult to find suitable or qualified staff. At the same time, hygiene and quality requirements are increasing. Automation solutions can provide one way out of the dilemma.
However, compared to other sectors, the food industry overall still has a relatively low degree of automation. The main cause of the very subdued rise in the degree of automation in the food sector lies with the products that are processed: here it is a case of natural and often delicate products, which can spoil very easily. The packaging procedure in all its different parts has to be tailored individually to the product, its shape and its specific characteristics. It is therefore very difficult, or in many cases barely possible, to standardize the procedure.
The possible areas of use for automation solutions within the packaging procedure extend from product infeed and loading right up to pack inspection and secondary packaging or palletizing at the end of the line. Automation is however only sensible if the degree of automation is tailored to the needs of the company, and is economically viable.
Last but not least, we also see an enormous potential for automation solutions in the life science and healthcare industry. The ever-increasing complexity of medical devices requires a correspondingly increasing degree of automation of both production and packaging processes. For us, this results in the task to develop and offer complete solutions that can map the increasingly complex tasks with the highest degree of process reliability.
LM: interpack is held every three years and the topic of sustainability has exponentially snowballed since the previous event. How far do you think the packaging industry has come, and how can it work together
using events such as interpack to continue on this journey? When it comes to sustainability, do you think the industry is focusing on the right things?
CT: Above all, packs play a very important role when it comes to product protection and shelf life. The industry is working at high speed on the development of new packaging materials, including mono films, which offer comparable performance and product protection to those made from various different polymers.
It should be emphasized, though, that plastic packs have considerable justification in many areas, for example in regard to the ratio of packaging volume to protective function. Therefore, the CO2 loss of food waste might have a higher impact than the CO2 footprint of the package itself. But we should not only have the carbon footprint in mind, but also the loss of other resources as for example water in case that food would be wasted. Today, barely 40% of all plastics are used in the packaging industry. Of this some 40% is recycled, while another 40% is recovered for energy purposes. In view of these figures, there is still a lot of potential in the market with regard to closed loops.
LM: Another big topic of this year’s show is ‘Save Food’. Again, how can your particular segment of the packaging value chain contribute to this all-important subject?
CT: Due to its excellent protective function and a comparatively small volume input, plastic packaging can significantly extend the shelf life of food. It makes a significant contribution to reducing food waste. In complex industries such as the food industry, it is now a matter of protecting food along the entire value chain and logistics chain.
Moreover, we are consistently striving to reduce the packaging material used in the production of packs, by utilizing specific equipment options and an optimized pack design. And last but not least, we are working with leading packaging material manufacturers to develop new packaging concepts, such as for example the use of recyclable materials.
LM: MULTIVAC is just one element of a long and complex supply chain, but we have heard a lot about the need for more joined-up thinking and knowledge-sharing along the entire chain if the industry is to achieve its sustainability targets. In your opinion, what are the most promising technologies / approaches to ensure this happens?
CT: Not only for MULTIVAC, but for the entire packaging industry, there are two major fields of action: the first concerns the significant reduction of packaging material through the use of suitable machine technologies, the design of packaging that ensures a reduced packaging weight and the processing of packaging materials with a low plastic content.
The second area of action concerns the production of recyclable packaging through the processing of alternative packaging materials and the development of a recyclable packaging design. However, the question is, how the use of alternative packaging materials and alternative packaging concepts influences the shelf life of the products – and how product protection can be ensured by the entire process chain, for example, of foodstuff.
In regard to packaging solutions, innovative packaging solutions use energy-efficient servo drives, sensors or tool changing systems, which not only guarantee an extremely efficient packaging process, but also have a positive impact on the energy balance of the packaging process.
LM: As a veteran of interpack, can you give me your opinion on how packaging machinery has advanced over the years, and how does interpack encourage innovation, competition, and progression? What are the biggest benefits for a company such as yourselves of attending this event?
CT: Over the years, packaging machinery has advanced in terms of the packaging material used, e.g. the film thickness has been reduced significantly and innovative concepts for sustainable packaging have been introduced. Also, IoT has found its way into the construction of packaging solutions.
interpack encourages progression, as many companies develop new innovations in a three-year cycle. As the leading international trade fair for the packaging industry, interpack gives us an opportunity to present ourselves to an international audience as a holistic solution provider for the processing and packaging of food as well as healthcare and life science products. n
‘TRUE DISRUPTION’: INSIDE THE RISE OF CANNED WATER AND WINE
Picture a bottle of wine in your mind. There’s no question that you imagined it to be contained in a single material: glass. The same can be said for bottled water – most consumers nowadays expect their Evian, Volvic or Vittel to come packaged in PET, or some variant thereof. In fact, it’s hard to think of products that are more intrinsically linked to a certain packaging medium than wine with glass and water with PET. Fin Slater reports.
However, in response to changing consumer attitudes and technological advancements, could the supremacy of these materials for wine and water applications be nearing its end? The fact of the matter is that a new packaging medium for these beverages is starting to gain traction: aluminium cans.
While still occupying a relatively small percentage of their respective markets, canned wines and waters are certainly starting to establish themselves. In the UK for example, consumption of canned wine increased 125% in the year to August 2019 – a trend that is broadly reflected in other territories.
Disruptors such as CanO and Liquid Death are leading the way in the canned water sector, while established, respected wine producers such as Coppola and Barefoot now offer their pino grigios and pinot noirs in canned form. Indeed, Mark Satchwell, managing director of Greencroft Bottling says that “canned wine consumption is growing at a rate of approximately 6% year on year in western Europe.”
Might beer – a beverage that was once exclusively packaged in glass containers – hold the key to this trend? Despite only being canned for the first time in 1933, canned beer has undeniably become a ubiquitous product.
So, can the same be said for wine and water – will canned versions of these products soon become as mainstream as canned beer? And, if this becomes a reality, what implications might this have for the wider industry?
The taste test Wine producers expend an enormous amount of time and energy on ensuring that their products taste exactly as they should. Then, when the product is ready to consume, sommeliers are paid good money to ascertain the differences between a tannic Malbec and a gentle one. And, while water is commonly believed to ‘taste of nothing’, factors such as minerality and source do indeed have an effect on its flavour.
This begs the question: does the material in which a beverage is packaged have any effect on its taste?
In an entirely non-scientific test, my colleagues at Packaging Europe and I could detect no distinct differences between a canned variety of Malbec, when compared with a bottled one. Likewise, perhaps unsurprisingly, we were also unable to taste the difference between bottled and canned water. Tests run by WICresearch, an advocacy group, under more scientific conditions appear to have reached similar conclusions. Of the people surveyed, most preferred the bottled wine they tasted – but only by a miniscule margin.
While taste tests like this can be viewed as essentially arbitrary, there are, in fact, a few scientific factors which suggest that canning might aid the flavour of the liquid it is used to contain. Aluminium’s opacity purportedly slows down the rate of sunlight-related oxidation – a phenomenon which can lead to flavour loss. Moreover, due to its chemical qualities, aluminium chills faster than glass and PET – meaning that your craving for cool water on a hot summer’s day will probably be satisfied sooner by a can of Liquid Death than a bottle of Acqua Panna. That being said, one of the key components of a wine’s flavour – age – can apparently be negatively affected by the canning process. In most cases, it is not recommended that consumers age their wine in cans in the same way that they might with a bottle.
However, despite all these conclusions, it’s clear that most consumers (including those at Packaging Europe Towers) are unable to spot the difference.
Design possibilities We’ve ascertained that there is little (if any) variance between the tastes of canned and bottled liquids. But aluminium canning also presents another point of divergence: shelf-appeal.
When walking down a supermarket beverage aisle, the key design difference between bottles and cans becomes obvious. Most bottles are decorated with a label or sleeve made of paper or plastic, whereas most cans have designs printed directly onto them – usually either digitally or via a more physical process.
Marvin Foreman, sales manager at Tonejet Limited argues that cans are manufactured to a higher precision than their counterparts, meaning that, at least in terms of digital printing, they can be printed on with greater accuracy. Cans are formed by being drawn out from discs, and, because aluminium is relatively soft and pliable, Foreman says that the same diameter
Like other materials, aluminium still faces a few sustainability challenges for which it has to implement concrete solutions.
is achieved every time. With a material like glass, for example, the industrial manufacturing process often involves the blowing of molten glass, and Foreman argues that the resulting shrinkage during cooling can result in inconsistent diameters. This can apparently become a problem during digital printing, a non-contact process that requires the printhead to be mounted at a precise distance away from the bottle. To reduce the risk of collision, “printheads have to be set further away from the bottle surface, which in turn reduces print quality significantly.” As well as similarly being subject to shrinkage, Foreman claims that PET is “inherently flexible and more difficult to move through a printer without deforming the outer surface.”
But, according to Foreman, printing directly onto beverage cans presents issues of its own. Most cans are varnished with a Teflon coating that makes it challenging to get ink to adhere. And, in addition to this coating, the external surface of these cans is often contaminated with fibres, particles, dust and oil. Foreman argues that these features mean that companies like Tonejet are “attempting to print onto a very difficult substrate.”
Resource management So, our cans have now been manufactured, designed and consumed – but what about end-of-life, and how might increased demand for different applications affect the sustainability of aluminium as a material?
Above all, the aluminium industry prides itself on its strong recycling rate – 74.5% in the EU according to European Aluminium – putting it well above the EU’s Circular Economy Package stipulation of 60% by 2030. Regarding the process itself, David Van Heuverswyn, director of Every Can Counts Europe, claims that it takes an average of 60 days – from collection to the redistribution of fully-recycled aluminium coils. Like glass, and unlike PET, aluminium is a permanent product – meaning that it can be recycled countless times without losing its material characteristics.
However, despite aluminium’s positive qualities in terms of recyclability, like other materials, it has its downsides when the full sustainability picture is considered.
Aluminium has impressive recycling rates, but an increased demand for aluminium cans for water and wine applications would obviously necessitate the production of more virgin aluminium – a process that, according to European Aluminium’s own figures, uses 95% more energy than the process of recycling the same material. As Van Heuverswyn says, “even if we would recycle 100% of the cans put on the market, as demand is growing further, virgin aluminium has to be used to fulfil said demand.” It’s no secret that this process – mining and refining bauxite ore into aluminium – causes significant damage to the environment through water pollution, deforestation and carbon emissions, when managed irresponsibly.
It’s clear then that the industry as a whole will need to encourage more sustainable practices if it needs to scale up production to meet potential future demand for wine and water applications. The International Aluminium Institute proposes a number of potential solutions to these issues, including the protection of culturally and environmentally significant areas, construction of settling ponds and other drainage control structures, the implementation of rehabilitation measures, and biodiversity management. And according to David Van Heuverswyn “the collection and sorting of used cans need to be further improved, in order to better facilitate can-to-can recycling.”
The growth of aluminium cans for the purposes of containing water and wine represents true disruption: an innovation that significantly alters an established commercial reality. However, despite the increasing presence of aluminium in this context, glass and PET still occupy the vast majority of the market. And, until cans reach the peak of their potential in this regard, the ultimate impact that this ascendance might have on taste, design, and sustainability habits remains to be seen. n
