Custom private-label bar manufacturer increases packaging efficiencies to meet growing demand. The new line slashes product loss from as high as 7% down to 1% and requires two operators instead of the previous 10.

Its A-to-Z business model for private-label bar production has been so well received by clients that Yourbarfactory in Montreal, Canada, has enjoyed 30% growth from 2004 to 2014. To keep up with this rapid increase in demand, Yourbarfactory recently added more automation its packaging line. Prior to making the upgrade, Yourbarfactory’s processing and packaging lines were decoupled and bars were manually collected after they were formed. The products were then transferred to the packaging area to be manually fed into horizontal flow wrappers for packaging.

“The process was very labor intensive. Ten people were required to manually transfer the bars and feed four flow wrappers,” says Cedrick Boivin, technical director at Yourbarfactory. The maximum production rate was 400 products per minute (ppm), 100 ppm per flow wrapper. The end result was considerable waste and downtime. Losses of 5% to 7% were not uncommon and the changeover and cleaning time was considerable. “We knew we needed to achieve an average speed of 600 ppm to keep up with demand,” Boivin says. “We also wanted to redeploy our labor to more high-value operations.”

Boivin researched several options to upgrade his packaging line and received proposals from numerous packaging machinery companies. “We analyzed total cost of ownership from a range of flow wrapper suppliers and Bosch came out on top,” says Boivin. “We knew the solid reputation of its Doboy brand of wrappers and, during the selection process, we developed a good, trusting relationship with our local Bosch sales representative, Fred Farago. He recommended Bosch’s Pack 401 flow wrapper and feeding system, which showed clear advantages that would maximize our line efficiency. Our decision was easy.”

Streamlining bar-to-wrapper transfer

In early 2013, Yourbarfactory installed two Pack 401 horizontal flow wrappers with a Bosch Pack Feeder 4 infeed system. The company also added a product distribution system (PDS) using row removal stations to automatically transport the bars from the processing to the packaging lines.

“Adding the Bosch equipment has made our packaging line extremely efficient. It now requires only two operators, letting us redirect manpower to higher-skilled tasks,” says Boivin. “It also achieves the 650ppm rates we need with less than 1% loss for high-volume products.”

Additional features on the Pack 401 wrappers further increase efficiency and savings throughout the line. “When launching a new product, runs are usually less than 100,000 bars and our packaging speeds slow to around 150 ppm. For these small runs, the no product/no paper feature considerably reduces film waste, creating significant cost savings for a start-up customer,” notes Boivin.

Another key benefit is that the Pack 401’s automatic film splice eliminates downtime for film changes and the auto reject mechanism on the infeed prevents jams from occurring. “In the past, our flow wrappers were down for at least five minutes every hour. Now, any downtime is a rare occurrence,” says Boivin.

Cleaning time for the wrappers and feeders has also been reduced 50% with the system’s easy belt removal and overall hygienic design—critical features for preventing contamination in an environment where many different products are manufactured.

As one can imagine, packaging different bars every few days on the same line requires a high amount of flexibility.  “We need flexible machines so we can meet our customer’s demands,” says Boivin. The Pack 401 provides Yourbarfactory with the necessary versatility, featuring quick-change parts and touchscreen recipe selections that trigger automatic servo motor adjustments to quickly prepare the machine for the next product.

The automation process has been so successful for Yourbarfactory that Boivin sees additional upgrades in the future as the company continues to grow. In fact, Yourbarfactory is planning to move to a new location in 2016 to increase its production space.

Bosch Packaging Technology, 715-246-6511 www.boschpackaging.com