Cereals manufacturing and packing specialist Bokomo Foods, Peterborough, has installed the first four-side seal sachet machine to be sold in the UK by PFM Packaging Machinery, newly appointed distributor for the Italian manufacturer MF Machinery.
The four lane vertical machine is now employed on a new contract won by Bokomo from a major UK retailer for single serve packs of porridge oats, some with dried fruit. Speed is up to 160 packs a minute using a paper/poly laminate.
To meet the tight product launch date, MF initially supplied a single lane machine on hire, also allowing product feed characteristics to be studied by engineers from MF and PFM.
“The single lane machine ran 24/7 and helped in the development of a new agitation system for the four-lane machine,” explains Neil Hackney, group engineering manager at Bokomo. “This gives us the fill accuracy we require.”
Servo driven, the MF sachet machine is equipped with touch-screen controls and uses a volumetric filling head equipped with the new agitation system, which operates both horizontally and vertically. It was chosen, says Neil Hackney, for providing the optimum combination of cost, performance and technology.