Advanced Packaging Technology Enables Candy Packaging to "Make Up with Mood"

In today's society, more and more people are always satisfied with their hunger, eating while walking, driving and watching TV. The disintegration of the fixed daily life structure, the separation of living space and workplace, the wide selection of leisure activities and its high mobility affect the consumer's diet to a certain extent. Consumers regard fast food as a balance of pressure brought about by fierce competition and realize that they occasionally seek special things to treat themselves. This apparent social change has been around for some time. They provide many opportunities for the confectionary industry to meet the needs of consumers and continue to introduce new products.

Colorful products, same convenience

Confectionery suppliers are responding to the ever-changing consumption habits by delivering a small, individually packaged product to the market. The industry is rapidly developing. When consumers want to eat between meals or want to eat with snacks, they will Choose these pocket candys. A closer look at these pockets of candy will prove once again that product innovation in the luxury industry is usually a packaging innovation. Mini products are always getting smaller and smaller, and use special packaging, which often determines the product's market. On the one hand, packaging has clearly differentiated the pocket type from other similar products. The important thing is that it can be eaten in an active state. On the other hand, this distinction cannot be too great. After all, pocket-sized products benefit from its original products. Brand. The most important thing is that small packages must not only be eaten at the time of the event, but must also be convenient for consumers. Consumers are certainly not willing to open these minipacks for food by tearing, biting, pulling, etc.

One example is a chocolate product in Switzerland that uses “walking and eating” as a selling point to highlight product convenience and differences. This product is 100 grams of typical flake chocolate, but it is not a whole piece, but instead is divided into eight pieces of a round stick. The product is packaged in a separate package that can be opened and pulled, and the appearance of the carton as an outer package is somewhat like a cigarette box, which is convenient, robust, and easy to open and close. This type of box clearly conveys the food that can be eaten "on the road". Brand-specific colors and trademarks clearly indicate the manufacturer of the product.

The development trend of packaging miniaturization has not let go of candy brands such as Gummi bears. This product has recently launched a new mini-pack. The use of a compact, rectangular cuboidal plastic bag instead of a tetrahedral bag allows the new package to become more robust without changing the material and capacity of the package. It is even more “special” when it is opened: Simply press quickly and forcefully with one hand. Bag, it will pop open at the seam.

Chocolate sandwich sandwich biscuits are another classic candy dessert product that is usually rolled into a tube retail. Today, this product can also be supplied in a portable form. Two sandwich biscuits sealed in a cuboid bag serve as snacks between meals and on the road. Eight 31-gram packs are placed in a folding carton and can be placed in a pocket or bag.

However, consumers who have already accepted a mouthful of convenience foods between meals are now enjoying leisure and luxury. This means that they are willing to “pamper” themselves to enjoy individually packaged chocolates and confectionery made by professional bakery. The mini candy industry is convinced that packaging is the trump card for industry innovation. To give an example: Add a little wild poppy seeds to add individually packaged chocolate, its packaging would be reminiscent of poppies, this box with a flip octagonal box cover, vividly imitating the shape of poppies. When the lid is opened, the box's side baffle slightly bends outwards, and the whole looks like a bouquet of poppies. The 15 chocolates in the box resemble red flowers. They are individually wrapped with a poppy red film to make them look like petals. Another special feature of this product is the unpacking of chocolate-like poppy seed capsules.

In this case, it is no accident that a new packaging similar to the elegant one is chosen as another type of chocolate. This kind of circular folding carton with individually packaged chocolates is targeted at the target group that loves sweets. The gold-embossed embossed relief, printed in six colors and embossed with two layers of clear varnish, gives this packaging a high-grade appearance. This type of packaging cleverly combines the development trends of two types of confectionery products that can be consumed "on the road" and "treat yourself".

On the other hand, raw materials can provide space for packaging innovation. The products used for “treating yourself” are the most suitable for transparent and translucent plastic packaging that has been popular in the past two or three years. This is the “transparency” of the 16 “Femina” chocolates used in the “Femina” brand. PET box packaging reasons. This rectangular box features a slightly slanted wall and a variety of colors for printing. The product is placed in two transparent, deep PET trays, and even each compartment consists of a long transparent PET. Compounds composed of transparent and translucent PET materials and blue print patterns allow us to see the bottom of the box directly. This form of packaging looks very mysterious, mainly for the female target group, unusual design and sober blue shadow is pleasing.

Not only individual chocolate manufacturers, biscuit marketers have begun to focus on "be kind to their own" target groups. Known as Petit Flirt's specialty bakery, which specializes in innovation in new products and packaging, its biscuits in one mouth pack are smaller than all of its products. In terms of convenience and product display, folding cartons with transparent film-sealed plastic trays offer significant advantages over conventional biscuit packaging. The feature of this package is that it has an easy-to-open lid that can be lifted up. Due to the large opening, the food inside looks attractive and easy to access. The film can be easily disassembled by placing labels on one of the four corners of the box. The film is a PET/PE compound made of silicon oxide vapor deposited through the laser along the edge of the box so that the entire box can be opened by simply removing the label.

Advanced packaging technology promotes the development of packaging

Smaller and smaller independent forms of packaging are welcomed by consumers, and careful consideration of the market by confectionery manufacturers has clearly paid off. This concept of individual packaging, proposed by developers and market operation experts, can only be implemented if it can be afforded. Without the flexibility of modern packaging machinery and the possibility to safely and quickly move candy foods, economical and practical folding of individual packaging does not work.

Load-bearing machines and pick-and-place packaging robots played an important role in the entire packaging process, which appeared in the mid-1980s. The reason for the success of pick-and-place robots is that they allow manufacturers to package smart products once. For a long period of time, there is no other choice than manual packaging.

The new generation of robots is very different from the first generation of pick-and-place machines. Today's robots place the product on an erect or flat continuous conveyor belt. Packaging raw materials, such as standard trays or cartons, are fed into the machine from the left and right conveyor belts, and the running speed is synchronized with the number of products and is completely automatically controlled.

The pick-and-place robot's suspension can be used to adjust the size of the occupied space and the processing speed. Typically, this suspension is fixed in a structural frame and is called a unit. The robotic suspension module is another option besides the robotic unit. It consists of a cylinder with a control element and a supply line connected to the cylinder and with two additional support arms. Due to the structure of the gantry, the robot suspension system occupies only a small space, and therefore, in the case of a narrow space, it can be easily integrated with an existing or new packaging line. In addition, all robotic components are easy to disassemble. This robotic suspension system is made of a special mineral material that has 15 times the soundproofing capacity of iron. This is why the vibration of fast-moving pick-and-place robots hardly affects the processing speed of suspension structures.

The robot module with six axes can improve the flexibility of pick-and-place mechanical production lines. Flexibility means that these mechanical devices can be moved in all directions, and even realize some additional functions, such as simple automatic tool conversion.

In the candy packaging industry, on-board mechanical devices are increasingly playing an important role. It is based on robotics and has more features than a purely pick-and-place robotic device. The load-loading device is not a single pickup cargo but is picked up in bulk and placed in the packaging material. Loading-loading devices can also handle folded packaging according to design requirements. This idea that was once thought to have no future by British research in the 1960s played an important role in the introduction of the first standard machine three years ago. The packaging machinery of the loading type loading device using robot technology has a high flexibility, and a large number of packaging tasks can be completed by simply exchanging the gripper units and adjusting the control software.

Source: China Color Card Network