Doing More With Less - A New Wave Of Change In The Stretchwrapping Industry

(From the article "The Finishing Stretch", Canadian Packaging, 31 March 201 )
Keeping a pallet loaded with packaged products safe and sound from shipment to customer delivery may not sound like one of the most glamorous packaging functions out there, but no self-respecting end-of-line packaging operation is really worthy of the name these days without at least one reliable, robust stretchwrapping machine in place to apply layers of stretchwrap film onto palletized loads to keep them stable and secure throughout their journey down the supply chain.

But while standard turntable and rotary-arm stretchwrapping technology has been largely bypassed by groundbreaking technological advances witnessed in some other packaging machinery segments, recent developments in the stretchwrapping systems and materials market suggest that this vitally important equipment category may be entering a far more exciting chapter in its evolution driven by relentless technological innovation, ongoing costs-reduction efforts, and concerns about the environmental impact of tonnes of discarded stretchwrap film ending up at landfills around the globe.

Doing more with less appears to be the emerging new mantra for some of North America’s leading stretchwrapping equipment manufacturers and distributors, with technology-savvy companies like Phoenix Innotech Inc. of Laval, Que., setting the pace in new equipment design and performance capabilities.

"You cannot look at stretchwrap equipment improvements without addressing the improvements in stretch film",says Phoenix Innotech general manager Graham Nicholson.

"With the vast improvements in stretch film technology, typical stretch film thicknesses have plummeted, and this ‘downgauge era’ has resulted in a real paradigm shift as to what is most required from stretchwrapping equipment today" as thin gauge films have eliminated the need for maximizing pre-stretch capabilities by up to 350 per cent.

"Now it is about providing a machine that can consistently run these light-gauge films and eliminating inherent deficiencies in the wrapping process", says Nicholson, explaining that Phoenix has recently addressed the issue by upgrading its film carriage design to execute reliable wraps even with film defects like nicks, gel spots or holes without film breaks.

"There is one huge deficiency in the conventional wrapping process that is causing a strong wave of change," says Nicholson, pointing out there’s been remarkably little real advancement in the mechanical design of most stretchwrapping systems in the 40 years since they were first commercialized.

"Turntable and rotary-arm technology has not really changed since the early 1970s", relates Nicholson, deriding the "inherent deficiency" and "costly drawbacks" of having the clamp and the cutting system both located in a fixed location on the conveyor. This means that while the carriage moves to the top of the load to start a wrap cycle it must dispense wasted film as it moves to get there. These two or more extra revolutions only increase costs, waste and wrapping time, while bringing little additional, if any, load integrity to the load being wrapped.

In fact, Nicholson contends, the costs of these extra film revolutions end up running into tens of thousands of dollars-money that could be easily recovered with his company’s rotary-ring machines whose clamp-and-cut mechanisms move within the carriage to eliminate the extra film revolutions and facilitate faster, more customized wrapping cycles.

"A recent customer who saved over $30,000 per year in stretch film costs likened it to using an old eight-pound satellite phone instead of a hands-free cellphone", Nicholson recalls.

"Although patent issues prevented the widespread use of ring technology in North America to date, the overwhelming dominance of rotary-ring technology had already taken hold about 15 years ago in Europe, where today’s rotary-ring wrappers have effectively replaced the old conventional rotary-arm and turntable automatic machines," Nicholson relates. "I don’t think it will be long before companies in North America begin switching en masse from the old turntables and rotary-arm machines to rotary ring equipment to take advantage of those cost benefits, and our company is actually leading the wave of this sweeping change by offering two models of rotary-ring systems to allow every level of end-user take advantage of this game-changing technology."

We moved our blog. You can find this article on our new blog here. Subscribe to our blog RSS feed for further stretch wrapper information.