Marden Edwards Journal

Imperial Tobacco in Nottingham has not only improved the integrity and security of transit packs holding either 3,000 or 5,000 cigarettes but is also saving space on shipping pallets thanks to the installation of several PSB1000 collating and stretchwrapping machines supplied by Marden Edwards Ltd.

The PSB1000 uses twin reels of polyethylene film which is stretched around the collation, forming a very tight band and drawing the packs tightly together. This systems produces a stable and uniform bundle before the seal is made and the film cut.

The machines at Imperial Tobacco are being used to collate and wrap overwrapped packs holding 100 cigarettes and they have the capability to handle these packs at speeds up 100 a minute. They are grouped into collations 5 packs wide by 5 packs deep and 2 packs high, measuring 600mm by 300mm 200mm overall and wrapped using film which can be up to one metre wide.

Once the collation has been wrapped, focused heat guns are used to shrink the overlapping film onto the sides of the collation, fully enclosing the bundle. This prevents the ingress of dirt or dust and makes it difficult for anyone to remove an individual pack without cutting or tearing the film, so providing a high degree of tamper evidence.

This system provides considerable cost advantages over casepacking when the price of polyethylene film is compared to corrugated cases and the resulting transit pack takes up less space than either the casepacked or shrinkwrapped equivalent.

A major UK logistics company has recently purchased and installed another Marden Edwards B125LH8 collator overwrapper.

It is becoming more common for logistics companies to act as contract packers for tobacco brand owners for small run and promotional batches.  Rather than disrupt high speed production lines in the main manufacturing plant, companies can contract out the packaging of different pack formats.

Because it is not possible to predict the variety of formats that might be required, it was very important for the logistics company to purchase a machine that can package many different formats of pack.  The B125LH8 collator wrapper is capable of producing anything from a two pack sales unit of cigarettes up to a five wide by four high 400’s distribution pack.

The B125LH8 can be equipped with a print registration system, as seen in the video.  This allows expensive carton outers to be replaced with printed, opaque film which provides an excellent presentation and a much reduced cost.  This concept is further discussed in the “Reducing the cost of cigarette packing” article.  Marden Edwards produces a complete range of overwrappers for the tobacco industry ranging from medium speed individual pack wrappers up to high speed collating and wrapping systems.

Four machines from the extensive Marden Edwards range of overwrapping and stretchbanding equipment will be on show at Interpack 2008, illustrating the considerable capabilities of the machinery manufactured at the company’s UK and German factories

The Evo-Fold over wrapper is a recent addition to the Marden Edwards line-up, designed as a low cost, fully automatic overwrapper that still delivers an excellent quality of wrap at high levels of efficiency. The Evo-Fold is suitable for applications where production requirements do not justify high levels of investment and in the past the user would either have bought a reconditioned, second hand machine or put their production out to contract.

For overwrapping large products, there is the BX225, which has been designed to wrap items such as large confectionery or biscuit cartons. As overwrap film offers significant cost savings when compared to shrink wrap material, users of the BX225 machines are able to produce large format overwrapped products at much lower cost than the shrink wrapped equivalent, while at the same time benefiting from the superior appearance and near-hermetic seal provided by overwrapping.

The TM100 is an overwrapping machine designed for the cosmetic, perfume and media industries where the longitudinal seal often appears on the trailing edge of the pack, producing a superior on-shelf display. The TM100 is a “combination” servo / mechanical machine with servo motors used where rapid size adjustments are required and mechanical linkages where no size adjustments are needed. The result is a machine which is very rapid to changeover yet retains the reliability of mechanical systems. The machine shown at Interpack is an in-line system.

For high-speed applications there is the WR200s, large format turret style overwrapping machine suitable for wrapping speeds up to 180 packs per minute. Because the turret is large, it is suitable for high speed wrapping of collations as well as individual products.

Marden Edwards is looking forward to meeting many of its agents, distributors and customers on it’s Interpack stand, no. B25. For the first time in many years the stand location has changed and it is now located in the middle of hall 16, an ideal position from which to explore the show. The stand is shared with Marden Edwards’ German distributor, Kopp, who will be displaying their range of laboratory sealing equipment.