PKN presents Pack Chat from Pack Expo, proudly supported by Heat and Control, bringing you packaging innovations that caught our eye on day one of the show.
Watch the video here:
SUMMARY TRANSCRIPT: First up, KHS is showcasing a multipack that needs almost no packaging at all. The Nature MultiPack – nicknamed the ‘No Pack’ – holds cans or bottles together with just a few small dots of KHS’s own patented adhesive. No cartons, no shrink film, no rings. Madeleine Jaeger from KHS told me that for every 1,000 cases, you need just 3.2 pouches of adhesive, compared with tonnes of board. It’s taking off in Europe in line with PPWR, but it’s not yet on the market in the USA. It saves producers money, and the cans pull apart easily when you want them to.
Next stop is Smurfit Westrock, where Matthew Zacherle told me how a partnership with Costco has seen the company develop solutions for replacing plastic handles with paper. It began in 2023 when Mexico banned plastic handles, and has grown to around 30 products across club stores. The latest development is Cluster-Clip for multipacks of glass jars – already running at more than 200 packs a minute for a marinara sauce brand. The company has also developed a new robotic machine that clips the jars right in the tray, which can integrate straight into an existing line.
Over on the ProMach stand, Zac Schiller showed me Rennco’s 301 Paper E-Commerce System, which swaps plastic film for heat-sealable paper. It talks directly to the warehouse management system, prints the shipping label, and right-sizes every bag to the product – from a fishing lure to a book – with no changeover required. The product goes in, the operator presses go, and a sealed, labelled parcel drops onto the conveyor, ready for the courier.
Also from the ProMach Group, Serpa has combined its side-load case packer and a dual-cell palletiser in one compact system, saving 40 per cent of floor space – ideal for pharmaceutical plants. What I liked is the open design: when there’s a jam, operators simply walk in and pull out the side guide. And numbered, colour-coded change points mean a format change takes less than five minutes, where many machines need an hour.
And finally, a Technology Excellence Awards finalist: the ZACMI Be-Fill can filler. Marco Motta explained that it can run beer, hot-fill juices and hard seltzers on the same line, at up to 1,500 cans a minute. Instead of the usual big rotating bowl, it’s fed from an external tank, which improves hygiene and cuts product waste at changeover. And because ZACMI makes both the filler and the seamer, there’s one supplier responsible – no more ping-pong when something goes wrong.
Thanks for watching Pack Chat. Join me again tomorrow for another roundup of the packaging innovations that catch my eye here at Pack Expo.
Thanks to our sponsor, Heat and Control. Whatever you want to make, Heat and Control will make it happen – proudly supporting the conversations and innovation shaping the future of processing and packaging.
