Used by Simplot Australia since late 2010 for its Birds Eye SteamFresh frozen vegetable products, FPA’s Gold winner for Technical Innovation is Berry Plastics Corp.’s microwavable “One Size Fits All” film packaging. One Size Fits All film features a universal design that allows customers such as Simplot to package various types of frozen food items in a range of pouch sizes and design formats using the same film roll stock.
“Existing microwavable frozen food packaged for consumer and institutional packages in the market have always had different graphics and/or different steam vent systems for every different package format and/or every different frozen food item or size,” explains Paul Wolak, Berry Plastics’ technical director Food and Beverage Packaging. “Food packers have had to use different roll stock to package every different product that runs on the packaging machine.”
One Size Fits All film is designed to accommodate package sizes from 5 to 28 oz and can be used to create pouch formats that include pillow, gusseted, and three-side sealed. “Packaging machine operators only need to adjust the lengths of the cut-off and change the setup for the different pouch designs to accommodate the change of food items on the packaging machine,” says Wolak. This results in reduced machine downtime, as operators “do not have to change the film roll for every job and completely redo the machine adjustments for every different food item,” he adds.
