“The industry shows an increased demand for flow wrapped cookies and crackers, both on edge and on pile. In view of these trends, Bosch has designed solutions that enable small to large producers to get and stay ahead of the competition,” says Andreas Schildknecht, product manager for horizontal packaging systems at Bosch Packaging Technology. “The modular design of these solutions allows for layout flexibility and scalability, enabling manufacturers to expand their production capacity easily or increase the level of automation – from entry level, hand-fed machines, right through to fully automated solutions.”
Pile packs: Gentle and flexible product handling
Bosch debuts its latest solution for pile pack applications. It offers manufacturers increased product protection and the ability to adjust the level of automation to match current and future needs. The system consists of a vibratory infeed, an innovative magazine feeder, a new horizontal flow wrapper and a new Integrated Topload Cartoner.
The Smart Pile Loader is developed for gentle product handling from feeding through to collation, achieving enhanced product protection, full product control as well as a continuous product flow. This results in minimized breakage and enables higher production speeds. Due to its ability to automatically and dynamically extract a variable number of biscuits from each magazine, the feeder compensates when the product supply from the oven to the packaging system varies. By extracting missing biscuits from one of the other lanes to build a complete stack, this feature supports automatic lane balancing.
In addition, manufacturers can select the desired stack height independently from the number of incoming magazines. This allows for easy changes to package configurations, for example to run special promotions. In order to accommodate inconsistencies in product heights that result from the baking process, the new technology also enables easy adjusting of the stacking mechanism to the varying product thickness, without machine stoppages. Before the stacks are delivered to the Pack 403 flow wrapper, collations of 1 to 4 stacks can be built per pack. Thanks to the wrapper’s improved sealing technology, the biscuits are reliably sealed and protected from moisture, increasing shelf life.
From there, the packs continue to the new Integrated Topload Cartoner (Kliklok ITC), which combines the benefits of three functions in one: carton erecting, loading and closing. Its compact design results in a reduced footprint and simplified operation while increasing speed and quality. Manufacturers profit from lower operation costs. Additionally, the Kliklok ITC provides high format flexibility and runs a variety of carton styles.
