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Variety Pack System

Unloading pouches, tubs, cans or bottles into packaging machines

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Variety Pack System: entering the 'booming business'?

Humans simply love choices. In addition, our lifestyle is getting busier. And the demand for convenience products increases. This type of consumer behavior brings great opportunities for offering variety packs (also called multi-flavour packs, mix boxes) as part of the sales and marketing strategy. Looking specifically at products that need to be sterilised, we’ve seen the following product launches recently:

Can variety pack

Wet pet food (2×6 flavors)

Spouted pouch variety pack

Baby food (3×4 flavors)

Pillow pouch variety pack

Pet food (4×3 flavors)

Bowl variety pack

Ready meals (4×3 flavors)

What is a variety pack process?

Variety packaging is a process where individual products are combined in a secondary packaging. Such as boxes, crates or shrink bundles.

In the human and pet food market in which we operate, we see many multipack boxes as output (6-,8- or 12 packs). Regularly up to 4 different flavours.

Automated unloading leads to efficiency

Getting multiple items in a box is complicated. And in many cases, this packaging process is still done manually. However, the shortage of labor in production is increasing. So, all the more reason to look at automation solutions that can fill this gap.

Our automated unloading solutions interfaces effortlessly with all leading suppliers of secondary packaging systems. For example Somic, PWR, Douglas, Schubert and Cama Group.

Show infographic Variety Pack infographic

Points to consider when automating:

Looking at batch retort processes in which products are sterilised, you can organise a variety pack process in several ways.

As usual, each option has its own advantages and disadvantages. We highlight a number of important factors that affect the efficiency of your packaging machines. This way you can make an informed choice yourself.

Make sure you can rely on a balanced and continuous infeed of your packaging machines, so that your case packers do not continuously stop when one of the flavors is missing.
If you opt for structured handling (tight patterns and 100% tray-filling), this increases the capacity and the ease of automatically unloading products towards your packaging machines.
Do you only have 1 kitchen or filling machine at your disposal? Then organise your multi-flavor process from an intermediate storage.
Unloading products from a temporary storage? Then consider whether it is economically wise to switch from a retort tray to a storage tray.