Huhtamaki designed 100g plastic bottles to hold Andros France SNC’s fruit snack in January 2005. The French company Andros manufactures fruit puréesees and jams including the popular Bonne Maman brand at its facility in
Biars-Sur-Cère.
Attractive packages that are air tight but easy to open
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Huhtamaki is providing small and innovative packaging solutions for two of Andros’ fruit snack products, Andros Snack and Andros Pocket. These products come in 100g containers and are designed to be attractive to children.
Since the snacks contain apple, they require protection from oxygen so that they do not lose their colour, taste and aroma. This made it necessary for Andros to choose barrier-packaging solutions.
The packaging had to be easy for children to open, but strong enough to withstand accidental damage. This led Huhtamaki to develop two different packaging solutions for Andros Snack and Andros Pocket.
Alternative to injection blow moulding
Andros Snack is a solid-fruit concentrate that is sold in 100g bottles. Usually, bottle-shaped single portion packs like this are produced through injection blow moulding, which can be expensive. Also, the monolayer features of such packs do not have the necessary barrier properties, so Andros needed an alternative solution.
The new pack from Huhtamaki packaging system is a unique compact bottle that is sealed with aluminium foil. Its high barrier properties mean the product is suitable for a child’s lunchbox.
The second product is the Andros Pocket. The flexible pouch has a tamper-evident spout and cap closure, and the fruit product inside is thick but drinkable. These pouches are foil-laminated and preserve the freshness and nutritional value that are desirable in children’s snack foods.
The Andros Pocket Pomme Nature 100g pouch features attractive six-colour rotator gravure graphics. The PET/ALU/OPA/ PE pouches have maximum barrier properties. They are hot filled through form-fill-seal technology.
The Flex-E-Fill automated rotary filling system
Huhtamaki, one of the largest packaging companies in the world, uses the Flex-E-Fill automated rotary filling system. This patented machine fills, heat-seals and places a lid on containers of different qualities and specifications. Flex-E-Fill, which is available on lease, is used for soft food products in all environments. These machines are widely used in Europe and Australia.
With Flex-E-Fill, companies can reduce the high costs of maintenance on larger filling lines. The machines offer cost-effective packaging solutions to smaller volume products. They are also useful in test-marketing variants or to launch new products where the volume on sale is indefinite.
Form-fill-seal combined with Flex-E-Fill
Flex-E-Fill is an eight-station rotary machine that is capable of filling pre-formed packaging from 50mL to 2L in size. The machine can be used for any packing format.
The Flex-E-Fill system consists of a primary machine with interchangeable parts attached to it. These can be replaced and it is easy to alter the machine’s specifications.
The packs’ standard laminate structures are suitable for a wide variety of products and applications. Besides being flexible, they offer trouble-free high-performance machinability, coupled with high barrier properties. The laminates are decorated with flexographic or rotogravure printing.
Form-fill-seal technology is used in the production. The barrier sheets that are used in thermoforming are supplied by Huhtamaki, and the product is sleeved and sealed in line. The bottle form requires a much thicker barrier sheet.
The pouches are hot filled through the form-fill-seal technology. Alcan Packaging Italia is providing the material for pouches. The material is manufactured from a PE/ALU/PET laminate, with gravure that is printed in six colours to give a high-quality effect at the point-of-sale.
