Driving Growth in Contract Packaging

Johanna has juice brands of its own, but it sometimes does contract packaging for Apple & Eve, a large branded juice manufacturer.

17/08/06 Print-registered film wrapper brings co-packer new business. Among the key drivers of the growth in contract packaging is the continued expansion of club stores and mass merchandisers. In juice manufacturing, the growth of these distribution channels sometimes brings about a layered arrangement of contract packagers.

Consider contract packagers Johanna Foods and the Center for Educational Advancement (CEA). Johanna has juice brands of its own, but it sometimes does contract packaging for Apple & Eve, a large branded juice manufacturer. When Apple & Eve receives an order from a mass merchandiser requiring mixed-flavored juice boxes in a 36-count shrink-wrapped tray, Johanna outsources the labor-intensive job of sorting and tray packaging to contract packager CEA. Johanna sends pallets of case-packed juice boxes to CEA, where workers break down the pallets and cases and then sort the primary packs into the assortments of flavors Apple & Eve's customer requires.

A not-for-profit organization, CEA lately has been investing in new Polypack shrink-wrapping equipment as Apple & Eve has added another wrinkle to its approach to multipacking. Where once Apple & Eve was content with clear shrink film, now it sometimes specifies printed film that must be applied in register. CEA meets these requests by using a Polypack twin-curtain shrink-wrapping machine and a Polypack single-curtain system.

The twin-curtain system, which wraps two bundles of juice boxes per cycle, is capable of 20 trays/min. The single-curtain system reaches only 14/min, but its smaller footprint made it attractive because CEA had a specific location in its facility where the machine fit. The single-curtain system also costs considerably less than the high-speed systems often found in large beverage packaging operations.

The printed film, supplied by Exopack, is a 2-mil high-density polyethylene printed flexo in seven colors. - Patrick Reynolds, Editor, Packaging World.