FachPack 2024 review: Automation and fiberization lead packaging industry trends

At this year’s FachPack in Nuremberg, Germany, packaging machinery companies showcased their latest innovations for robotics and automation. Industry leaders highlighted recyclable and fiber-based solutions as the most popular packaging choices, underscoring a sustained effort toward circularity.

Multivac presented its fully automated, high-performance packaging machine for pharmaceutical products. On the show floor, Matthias Riedel, head of sales for medical pharma tells Packaging Insights that machine design remains crucial in the medical and pharma business to reduce risk and ensure patient safety. 

“The whole machine is designed in the GMP-clean design. Clean design is important after line clearance, that we can ensure that there is no product left from the bench before. When we go through the single stations, we start with a forming station designed to run different films,” says Riedel.

“On this year’s machine, we show sustainable film with the forming system. You can guarantee that we have a very high quality forming of our packages, which ensures, in the following processes, low-risk loading, low-risk sealing and at the end, patient safety.”

Multivac presented its fully automated packaging machine for pharmaceutical products.After the forming station, products arrive at the loading area and get loaded into the mold. 

“There we have different possibilities,” continues Riedel. “We can integrate our own solutions, like parallel markets, Delta Kinematics, and here on our line, you see our latest innovation, Scara robotic made by Multivac, fully integrated by Multivac.”

Automation importance

When the product is loaded into the cavity of the machine (Scara robotic), there is the possibility to print the top film. “In this case, we show an HD printer from our partner Belmark,” says Riedel. “With the HD printer, we can print in four colors and also be prepared for the regulations of the pharmaceutical industry like performance level and readability of the builded data on the package.”

After printing the top film, Riedel says the line ensures that Multivac has the correct print on the machine with a vision system, in that case, a camera-based vision system which reads the codes, the variable data and checks with the recipe if the right data are on our package. 

After printing, the product goes into the sealing station. “It is very important to have a well-formed package during the sealing process. With a well-formed package, we minimize risk and ensure that the package is sealed completely.”

When the package is closed, it goes into the channelizing area —- the cutting area. “Here in the cutting area, we use robots for automation,” continues Riedel.

Automation is important as it eliminates failures caused by human interaction, he asserts. “This robot picks up a complete format, then it gets the information out of the motion control from the packaging machine, from the processes before and gives only good packages to the following process, again, risk limitation is very important that all the good packages can get into the downstream process.”

Regarding the importance of robotics and automation for medical pharma packaging, Dietmar Bohlen, head of sales for food adds that especially for food, Multivac is successful in selling automated products for two main reasons:

“The first thing is hygienics — we want to avoid people touching the product and the second reason is labor — manpower. “It’s more and more hard to get people who are willing to work in such an environment in the food industry.”

“Many times the environment is cold, it’s wet. From time to time, it’s dirty and that’s why people look for jobs where they have a warm and dry environment.”

Optimizing space and performance

Gerhard Schubert showcased its Power Compact machine. Marcel Kiessling, Schubert’s managing director, says that power compact stands for a machine concept where the company aims to concentrate as much performance as possible on the least possible space. 

“So this machine behind me is packing bars, 600 bars per minute, and we are combining different technologies in order to bring that performance to a very small floor space,” Kiessling tells Packaging Insights. Schubert’s Power Compact machine is packing bars with increased performance and less space required.

“What you see behind me is a new feeding system called comfort feeder, where we can load the pallet with the blanks, where we erect the boxes directly into the machine,” he says. 

“Think about automating the intralogistic process with HEVs, for example, where you would take the pallets with the blanks from your inventory directly into the packaging machine without manually loading the magazines with the blanks. So this is one innovation.”

Kiessling says another innovation is a new erecting aggregate, which is a standard aggregate, making 60 boxes per minute, “and you can combine that with another one for 220 boxes.”

“So both are examples for concentrating performance on a very small floor space, and after erecting the box, of course, there's the filling process and the closing process, in this case with a four axis dabba robot. So small glove space, maximum performance. This is what power compact stands for.”

Fiberization leads trends 

The fiberization of packaging has been a major trend at FachPack over the past five years.

Torsten Murra, sales director for Europe at Mondi, presented the company’s FlexiBag Reinforced packaging for improved material features and recycled content inclusion at FachPack 2024. Murra also tells us about Mondi’s vacuum packaging solution for coffee and the advantages of vacuum packs for the food industry.

Meanwhile, ProAmpac’s product development director Lynsey Maddison tells Packaging Insights that a lot of products are moving from traditionally plastic-based into more fiber based products. 

ProAmpac’s food on-the-go packaging range.

“These products are very varied and can be anything from sort of frozen food packaging to food on-the-go packaging,” explains Maddison.

“And the fiberization basically means that it’s a product that consumers understand, perhaps a little bit better than the current plastic products, because they kind of understand that link between the paper and the fiber and the trees, so they feel it’s more natural. So it’s great to have a really wide range of these, these products that we class as fibrized products, alongside our more traditional plastic packaging.”

On-the-go pack demands

Maddison highlights on-the-go as an important business area for ProAmpac. “Again, consumer demand very much drives convenience. We’re a group of people that very much enjoy convenience and easy packaging.”

“We have a great range for anything from hot hold so going with the merry chef products in the ovens, where we can pick things up and have the hot food immediately from, say, a service station, right the way through to our sandwich wedges, our tortilla wedges, and even our newer, newer size of square, classic pack sheet.”

Maddison also highlights ProAmpac’s MP 1000 Series products. “This is our moisture protect range developed in conjunction with Aptar technologies. So this product is designed to replace the little sachets of granules that you get in products where they have to control humidity, things like medical devices or sort of digital equipment, and that's starting to gain ground now.”