With the development of plastic reduction, environmental protection and lightweighting in the food industry, the packaging of snacks such as potato chips and puffed food is undergoing obvious changes: thinner packaging bags, phasing out of plastic inner trays, and degradable cartons replacing traditional ones. These changes also put forward new adaptation requirements for the supporting food cartoning machine. The first requirement is adaptation to thinner lightweight snack packaging bags. To reduce plastic use, more and more brands adopt thinner food packaging bags, which are easier to be punctured by sharp parts or broken by heavy pushing. This requires that all parts of the food cartoning machine in contact with packaging, including conveying tracks, pushing heads and folding mechanisms, must undergo stricter smooth polishing to remove all burrs and sharp edges. Meanwhile, the pushing force needs to be softer and more precise to avoid deformation and rupture of thin bags due to excessive force. For equipment adopting low-pressure conveying, the conveying air speed shall also be adjusted accordingly to avoid blowing thin bags apart with excessive wind force.
The second requirement is adaptation to plastic-free inner tray packaging structures. In the past, plastic inner trays were commonly used in puffed snack boxes to fix products and prevent shaking and breakage during transportation. Now more and more brands use pulp trays, cardboard trays or even no-inner-tray designs to reduce plastic use. Paper inner trays have larger dimensional tolerances and are more brittle, and no-tray designs rely entirely on the stability of product arrangement themselves, which puts forward higher requirements for the feeding positioning accuracy of the food cartoning machine. The equipment needs to upgrade its photoelectric positioning system to precisely control the feeding position of each snack bag, ensuring products are neatly arranged in the carton and avoiding shaking, collision and breakage during transportation.
The third requirement is adaptation to degradable eco-friendly cartons. Recycled paper and degradable cardboard have lower stiffness than traditional coated cartons, and are more prone to deformation and tearing during folding and conveying. This requires the folding mechanism of the food cartoning machine to have adjustable pressure, and the suction force of suction cups can be flexibly adjusted according to paper properties, ensuring carton forming while avoiding carton damage. Meanwhile, lightweight cartons are lighter in weight, so the air speed of low-pressure conveying shall also be optimized accordingly to prevent carton drift and misalignment during conveying.
For snack manufacturers, deploying cartoning equipment adapted to eco-friendly lightweight packaging in advance can respond faster to brands' packaging upgrading demands and take the initiative in the sustainable transformation of the industry. For eco-friendly packaging adaptation transformation, equipment upgrading solutions and official quotation, you may contact us via wzleadwing@163.com, cangyuan60@gmail.com or phone number 86-18958842178.