Functionality usually takes a back seat or rides shotgun with environmentally friendly packaging materials, but that’s not the case with a new polymer film from the Australian firm Plantic Technologies Ltd.
Case-ready meat has replaced in-store wrapping for many products, and a new film provides another opportunity for centralized packaging in vacuum bags.
Tool-less opening of primal cuts in foodservice and back-of-house retail operations has come to pork, a year after Sealed Air Corp.’s Cryovac division introduced the feature to bags used in beef shipments.
Engineers have taken advantage of 3-D printing for rapid prototyping of tools and parts in recent years. Technicians at the German firm Festo AG & Co. are taking the technology to the next level to mass produce end-of-arm robotic attachments.
With exhibitors from 38 nations on the show floor, March’s Anuga FoodTec in Cologne, Germany was a showcase for global food packaging and processing technology.