A perusal of Pack Expo

Staff -- Converting Magazine, 12/1/2000

The mammoth Pack Expo Intl. 2000, which filled every sq in. of space at Chicago's McCormick Place last month, is history. Nearly 76,000 packaging professionals, including 6,300 international visitors, attended the five-day event. Among its more than 1,600 exhibitors were many converters strutting their latest packaging products. Here's but a sampling of the items your competitors were touting at the show:

A joint effort between converter Pactiv Corp. (Lake Forest, Ill.) and cheesemaker Sargento Foods, Inc. (Plymouth, Wis.) reportedly creates the first commercial flex pack with inline application of the Heftyr Slide-Rite resealable closure. Until now it was available only on premade bags. The two companies worked 18 months to engineer the ability to apply the slider closure to bag film running on a horizontal form-fill-seal machine. The Sargento product will go into national distribution in the second quarter of 2001, and Pactiv plans to expand Slide-Rite's use to other markets such as deli meats.

Kapak Corp. (St. Louis Park, Minn.) debuts a new generation of flexible retort-pouch materials for institutional food packages. Two laminations are offered so end users have a transparent option as well: polyester/silica-coated nylon/cast PP (transparent) and polyester/foil/biaxially-oriented nylon/cast PP. The film is said to withstand barrier and drop tests, and retort temperatures up to 250 deg F. Options include easy-open, laser-scored, custom shapes, preformed designs and premade pouches.

Nestle Foods (Glendale, Calif.) adopts new roll-fed, glue-applied shrink labels for its line of contoured CoffeeMater creamer containers. The labels use National Starch & Chemical Co.'s (Bridgewater, N.J.) UV-curable CONTOURT system for high-speed labeling of full-wrap shrink films at speeds to 300/min. Developed jointly with labeler providers Trine, Krones and B & H Machinery, the system is an alternative to full-body shrink sleeves that use traditional hot-melt adhesives. CONTOUR reportedly forms a secure bond at the seam which will not "creep" during labeling and shrinking.

Smurfit-Stone Container Corp. (Chicago) will reportedly receive the first PMC-1300NR, a two-piece convolute, large-frame canister forming machine from Paper Machinery Corp. (Milwaukee) before year's end. A wide variety of non-round (squarish, oval, rectangular) paperboard canisters can be made on the system. Hinged, composite overcaps or simplified easy-open plastic closures top off the packages which feature paper-based bottoms.

Flexible-packaging converter Sonoco (Hartsville, S.C.) which purchased the flex-pack div. of Graphic Packaging Corp. in 1999, showed off its broad capabilities with samples of everything from holographic candy wrap to fancy folding cartons prepared with advanced prepress techniques. According to managing director Brad Ross, "There is a real need for packaging suppliers with the technical capability to produce large and small volumes of enhanced packaging, but also for suppliers who can do it quickly, at a competitive cost and with value-adding services. Sonoco satisfies that model."

VistaFlexr inflatable packaging by Sealed Air Corp., Danbury, Conn., was developed for toner cartridges but can be used for consumers to return purchased items undamaged. The package consists of two inflated end-cap cushions, each forming a self-adjusting "A frame" which fits toner cartridges of varying sizes.