published on 17/03/09
Thanks to capless induction sealing, the dairy industrys days of crying over spilt milk are long gone.Contract engineers are now installing the capless induction systems worldwide now that packers, processors and consumers are catching on too
Companies that have recently invested in capless induction systems from Relco include Nestlé, for its Munch Bunch Squashums yoghurts, which come in a strawberry-shaped PET container, and Lee Kum Kee Foods in China, for oyster sauce, which is sold in a 300ml PET container. At Lee Kum Kee Foods, the sauce has to undergo post-sealing sterilisation, which made capless induction sealing the obvious choice.
This installation posed a number of technical challenges that had to be overcome by Relco: the container has to be carefully handled to avoid spilling the product or distorting the bottle, and the neck supported so sealing pressure is not transferred to the base of the bottle. The seal strength also has to be sufficient to withstand post-sealing processing, plus the machine has to incorporate automatic head height adjustment for different sizes of bottles and be easily accessable for the contract engineers in terms of maintenance.

Contract engineers installed a single head capping machine on behalf of Masterfil to DDD (Fleet Laboratories), a contract packer of pharmaceuticals and toiletries. The machine handles 18 types and sizes of container and a number of caps including screw cap, pump pack and press-on lids. Containers can be automatically fed or hand fed on to the conveyor.The contract ehgineers are also on hand to provide prop active and re active maintenance
The Mastercap single-head inline indexing capping machine can achieve speeds of up to 60 containers per minute, dependent on product, container and cap type. Masterfil says changeovers between cap styles and sizes are made quick and easy by features like push-button height adjustment of capping heads, colour coded change parts and programmable control systems.
Optima Packaging Machinery has launched the CFL1, a new machine for applying functional closures. These are closures containing ingredients which are released into the beverage or cosmetic product when it is opened. This preserves the quality of the ingredients.
While the foil seal may seem innocuous and unexciting, if it weren’t for those humble little circles, customers would still be finding leaky milk bottles in their shopping baskets

Read the full article at Packagingnews.co.uk