Automated Lidding

When your manufacturing location is regional and your business plan is to sell nationally, even globally, there is a need for a solution. This is especially true when producing food products. With retail distribution processes, this becomes a much more difficult problem.

The Challenge

Retail sale of fresh foods comes with a shelf life expectancy, a very short shelf life. In order to withstand the time to process, ship and distribute these foods across the nation, while preserving the shelf life, packaging becomes a critical component.

The Solution

Achieving the goal required a well-informed knowledge of materials best suited for food. This entails barrier properties, which factor in on the control of air, light, moisture, etc. Materials can differ in their barrier properties so understanding the material characteristics is key to the right solution.

Working together the engineering and quality experts developed thermoformed food packaging with the correct barrier properties for its products.

The Result

With materials selected to best preserve the foods, the next step was the application of automation features comprising of robotics for tray selection, food additions, and automated lidding of each individual tray.

The new thermoformed packaging tray increased the shelf life of the products, which allowed sales to locations further away and greatly increase annual sales revenue. Additionally, prior to the addition of the foods and the lidding, these food trays arrive neatly nested to aid, not only in the reduction of shipping costs, but to also allow for robotic selection in production.