Marden Edwards Journal

Marden Edwards is a world leading supplier and manufacturer of overwrapping and shrinkwrapping machinery and systems principally serving the confectionery, cosmetic and perfume, food, paper, CD and DVD, pharmaceutical and healthcare, tea and coffee, and tobacco industries. This is the information and discussion blog for the main Marden Edwards website. It is intended to inform customers, visitors and trade partners about recent developments and aplications as well as to disseminate information relating to overwrapping machinery and the packaging industry in general.

Marden Edwards has recently supplied one of Russia’s oldest established manufacturers of confectionery products with a new BX100FF over wrapping machine.  The BX100FF wraps the chocolate boxes at a rate of 50 wraps per minute.

Overwrapping is ideally suited to the wrapping of chocolate assortment boxes.  It extends the shelf life of the product by providing a near hermetic seal and unlike shrinkwrapping there is no need to perforate the film to allow the film shrinking to take place.  The overwrap also protects the product from damage or being tampered with once it has left the factory.

Overwrapping only uses a small amount of heat to seal the film which has the dual benefits of protecting the product from damage and reducing the energy costs associated with the wrapping process.

If a skin tight finish is required, then the optional Marden Edwards shrink tidying system can be added after the machine.  The shrink tightener uses moving heated top and bottom belts in contact with the wrapped box to produce a skin tight finish.  The resulting pack has no film wrinkles and the tear tape, if fitted, is still perfectly aligned around the pack.  The shrink tidyer has applications across many industries, including tea and tobacco packaging.  As well as being available as a stand alone unit, the shrink tightener can also be integrated into the overwrapping machine.

Marden Edwards is represented in Russia by ECI Ltd., who have a wide range of expertise within the packaging machinery industry.

Marden Edwards will be exhibiting it’s new BX100FF playing card overwrapping machine at the forthcoming Drupa exhibition in Dusseldorf.  Drupa is the world’s largest paper and printing exhibition and the Marden Edwards machine is being shown on the Rollem stand in Hall 11.

Rollem is a major manufacturer of print finishing systems.  Rollem will  be exhibiting a Revolution card finishing machine together with a Ruge & Singer round cornering machine.  The Marden Edwards BX100FF is directly linked to the Ruge & Singer and the entire production line will be in almost continuous production slitting, round cornering and overwrapping decks of playing cards.

Marden Edwards manufactures many different types of packaging machinery for the converting and paper industries, producing machines for overwrapping carton blanks, currency, envelopes, game cards, notepads, paper serviettes, postage stamps, reams of paper and sticky memo pads.

With a greater emphasis on environmental sustainability, bio-degradability and cost reduction there is a greater focus being placed on wrapping products with paper.  Whether it is being used for gift or presentation purposes, protection or for distribution and transit purposes, paper as a wrapping material can offer a quality impression that also conforms to the most stringent of environmentally conscious concerns.

All Marden Edwards base seal overwrapping machines can already wrap with paper instead of film.  The positive gripper system that transports the wrapping material through the machine is perfect for reels of paper resulting in no machine conversion work necessary.  However, for this simple conversion to happen it makes the assumption that the paper itself can be already be sealed by heat.

There are two types of self adhesive paper available, paper which contains a thin plastic coating which seals when heat is applied and paper where the a glue is pre-sprayed in the exact places where the seal needs to be made.

The plastic coated paper can be expensive and has the problem of not being able to fully bio-degrade.  The advantage is that it can be run on any existing Marden Edwards overwrapper with no conversion.  Paper where the glue has been sprayed into discrete locations is less expensive but the overwrapping machine requires the fitting of a standard print registration system to ensure that the paper and seals are accurately placed around the pack being wrapped.  The biodegradability of the glue can also be in question but recent developments by such companies as Parkside Flexibles have resulted in materials which have complete bio-degradability.

If non adhesive paper is to be used, Marden Edwards can supply one of its range of KAP Kraft paper overwrappers, which applies the glue to the paper as the machine is running.  Marden Edwards has manufactured over two hundred of this style of machine and the PVA, sugar based dextrin or hot melt glue is applied inside the machine as the materials are running through.  Typically PVA and dextrin are used for presentation quality wrapping whereas hot melt glue is used when the paper is replacing cardboard for reducing casepacking costs.    

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.