According to Wikipedia, 'instant food' can be defined as
foods that provide convenience to consumers and assists in reducing "the
time of preparation/cooking and drudgery", whereby no more than five
minutes of time is required from the time of food preparation to the food being
consumed.
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| Food Packaging Machines |
In the contemporary world, the range and variety of instant food is huge. From instant baby food, instant soups, cup noodles, sauce mixes to beverages like powdered milk, fruit-flavoured drink mixes, instant tea & coffee to canned food and RTE/RTC packs - the number of instant foods available on retail shelves is mind-boggling.
Packaging of
Ready-to-eat (RTE) & Ready-to-cook (RTC) Food
For the purpose of this blog, let's narrow our discussion on
instant food packaging to packaging of RTE/RTC food. Due to growing
urbanisation, and changes in society such as changing food habits, more women
pursuing professional careers, unavailability of domestic help, increase in
nuclear families, people prefer the convenience and variety of ready-to-eat
and ready-to-cook food over cooking at home.
Ready-to-Eat (RTE) and Ready-To-Serve (RTS) food broadly
comprise items such as meat products like pre-cooked sausages, ham, chicken
products, curries, chapattis, rice dishes, aloo chole, navratan kurma, channa
masala, palak-paneer, etc.
Ready-to-Cook food includes instant mixes like cake mixes,
gulab-jamun mix, falooda mix, icecream mix, jelly mix, pudding mix, soup
powders, etc.; ready snacks & breakfast meals such as upma, masala oats,
poha, etc.; and pasta products like noodles, macaroni, vermicelli, etc.
The purpose of proper
instant food packaging
Proper packaging must essentially contain and protect the
food from external contamination. This function involves retardation of
deterioration, extension of shelf life, and maintenance of quality
and safety of packaged food. Packaging should protect food from
environmental influences such as heat, light, the presence or absence of
moisture, oxygen, pressure, enzymes, spurious odors, microorganisms, insects,
dirt and dust particles, gaseous emissions, and so on.
The packaging should be an effective marketing tool, and
should provide convenience of use to the consumer. And before it reaches the
consumer, the package should remain undamaged throughout the shipping, storage
and handling process.
Points to consider
when choosing the right packaging machine
There are 3 main points to consider when choosing the right
equipment for instant food
packaging.
1. Speed: Ideally, you need to understand your
targets. How many packs and how fast you want to package them every day, should
be defined. If you are a startup or investing in packaging machinery for the
first time, you could start with a smaller, slower machine.
2. Pouch format: Diversity of products and goals can
help you choose the machine that's best for your operations. If you hope to
widen your product range and SKUs, you need a machine that's versatile enough
to grow with you.
3. Operating cost and maintenance: An automated
packaging machine is a big investment but it doesn’t stop there. Some may
be costlier but deliver smoother, hassle-free performance. Focus on all the
elements of operating costs and overheads such as electricity and labor to
operate the line. Also, being used for food products, the machine should be
easy to clean with fast, hassle-free changeovers.
4. Training:
The machine you select will affect the amount of training and employee hours
required to operate the machine. The advantage of an automated form-fill-seal
machine is that once the operator has been trained and the machine commissioned
& configured, the operator can concentrate on other tasks.
Ideally, your packaging machine manufacturer should provide
the training and support you need to ensure efficient operations with minimal
downtime.
Select the right
packaging machine manufacturer
For RTE & RTC Food packaging, Nichrome is a reliable and
experienced integrated packaging
solutions provider. Nichrome has four decades of experience in the flexible packaging industry,
and 7000+ installations across India and the world. For enterprises big and
small, in India and abroad, Nichrome partners to add value through the entire
lifecycle. Nichrome studies the customer’s requirements, goals and application
challenges to deliver innovative
food packaging solutions that will protect the purity of the product,
improve time-to-market, and enhance the retail value of the brand.
Nichrome’s RTE food
packaging machine
Nichrome’s highly advanced variant of the Pick-Fill-Seal Machine is a Ready-to-eat
food packaging machine with specially designed RTE fillers which can be used to
conveniently and quickly pack a wide variety of ready-to-eat and ready-to-cook
foods.
This rotary filling and sealing machine enables 2 different
fillers to dispense different types of ingredients in the same pouch, allowing
for easy mixing of ingredients, through gentle handling and without damaging
the ingredients.
This automatic
packaging machine allows manufacturers of RTE foods to conveniently pack
their perishable products, safely, in a wide variety of stand-up pouch formats,
which can then be subjected to retort packaging for longer shelf life.
The PFS Machine also provides a cost-effective integrated packaging solution
because it is available with multiple filler options, which can be used for the
packaging of items other than RTE foods.
Nichrome’s RTC Food
packaging solutions
For RTC products, Nichrome offers a wide range of VFFS and HFFS
machines. In the VFFS category, there are many options in the Maxima, Excel
and Sprint series of automatic
packaging machines. These machines efficiently pack powders, pre-mixes,
instant mixes and granular products in a variety of pouch formats: CSPP, CSPP
chain of pouches, 4 line seal, gusset, pentaseal and pentaseal with D-cut.
All these machines have a compact design, with a small
footprint so they occupy less floor space in factories. They are equipped with
PLC-based control system and touch screen HMI. With servo motor driven sealing
system, Nichrome's VFFS machines
effectively fill and seal a wide variety of snacks and RTC powders with speed
and accuracy.
Nichrome’s HFFS range brings the superior performance of
linear technology from Totpack, Spain. The Totpack Series is versatile, and can
be used for packing a wide range of powders, grains, snacks, liquids
and viscous products using different fillers. The Series also offers a
range of pouch formats with superior pouch aesthetics.
The HFFS
machines are PLC based machines with touch screen interface. They offer
both single and perforated chain of pouches with quick and easy changeover.
Well designed duplex modules are available for higher outputs.
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