“We had been putting the sausage links into bags that were then vacuum-packed and shrunk on a rotary chamber machine,” says president Michael Kiolbassa. “This worked well, but placing that many links in a bag could be difficult, and as we increased production, the labor requirements became prohibitive. We had been using a chamber machine, and Multivac approached us about installing one of their FormShrink machines.” The proprietary Multivac FormShrink packaging process uses special high-shrink thermoforming films that shrink tightly when passed through a heating tunnel. This results in an attractive package with a second-skin appearance around the contours of the product. The process minimizes excess packaging and the “dog ears” often associated with shrink-bag packaging. “We didn’t want to sacrifice the look we achieved with the bags, but the FormShrink uses printed film that is synchronized top and bottom, and the finished packages look just like the bags,” says Kiolbassa. “We ran the numbers, and it looked like the rollstock machine would save us a lot of money, so we decided to go ahead with it.” Kiolbassa installed the Multivac Model R-250 FormShrink machine in April of this year.
Machine has been phenomenal “The FormShrink machine has been phenomenal,” says Kiolbassa. “Our output has doubled, and we’ve cut our labor costs by 35 percent. It wasn’t easy at first. We had a steep learning curve for the first 90 days. The bag machine runs the same for everything; you just change the bags for different products. “With the FormShrink machine, you have to change the film for each product and change the cavities for each package size, so we had to revise our production schedules to have longer runs of each product and package. Bu Multivac had people here to help us, and the system is working really well now.” Plant manger Ismail Jaber concurs. “We’re thrilled with the FormShrink machine,” he says. “It has surpassed our expectations. Both Multivac and Curwood had a crew here for several weeks, and they gave our people really intensive training. This is our busy season, so we’re running the machine 12 hr/day, six days/week, and we’ve had no problems.” . freshness keeping frozen bags
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