Page 38 - Packaging News Magazine May-June 2019

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AUSPACK REVIEW
Faces at the fair
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www.packagingnews.com.au
May-June 2019
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PROSEAL’S CUSTOMER COLLABORATION KUDOS
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AUSTRALIS LAUNCHES CLEANER CONVEYOR
PROSEAL Australia took home one of five 2019 APPMA Awards of Excellence for its collabora- tion with Fresh Berry Co on a sustainable strawberry punnet.
The punnet, made up of a compostable pulp tray from North American supplier CKF and film from British company KM Packaging, was launched in September of last year after much consultation with the
customer, according to Gary Lee, sales manager at ProSeal.
“We were speaking to Fresh Berry Co, one of the local straw- berry growers in Victoria, and they were looking for some- thing a bit different – they were looking to reduce the amount of plastic in their packaging. We showed them the CKF punnet, and instantly John Pettinella, one of the owners, firmly be- lieved that this was a product for the future,” said Lee.
Lee told PKN that, following product trials, Fresh Berry Co and ProSeal generated some samples which Pettinella dem- onstrated to major retailers be- fore the product’s launch.
“ProSeal were sealing the film to the trays, and we started with a semi-automatic machine to get the initial samples out be- fore moving to a fully automatic solution for mass production,” Lee said. ■
AUSTRALIS ENGINEERING manag- ing director Peter Gustafson headed to AUSPACK 2019 to demonstrate Hygenius, the company’s new food grade con- veyor that debuted at the show.
The Hygenius Conveyor has been specifically designed to be taken apart and reassembled for cleaning in under two minutes without tools, compared to up to 40 minutes for traditionally designed conveyors.
Gustafson said that while many conveyor components are hygiene certified, no whole conveyors are, and it was this that inspired the company to design the Hygenius system.
Hygenius features tool-less removal of wear strips and re- turn rollers in preparation for washdown.
The design of the Hygenius Conveyor also minimises sur- faces, removes hidden and hard to reach crevices to reduce bac-
Australis Engineering managing director Peter Gustafson demonstrating Hygenius.
terial contamination risks, and uses EHEDG approved compo- nents to achieve food grade and hygienic standards.
The conveyor’s open-frame de- sign also has fully guarded head and tail areas for operator safety, an area that is often overlooked in other washdown conveyors.
“We’ve had plenty of positive feedback. Some rated Hygenius as the best thing they had seen at the entire exhibition,” Gus- tafson said. ■
“We’re so proud”: Gary Lee, ProSeal, with the APPMA Award of Excellence for Customer Collaboration.