At the morning meeting last Wednesday, when Zhang Gong from the R&D department rushed into the workshop holding the golden trophy, we were debugging the newly launched third-generation coffee packaging machine. "Brothers, our intelligent fresh-locking solution won the award!" Before he finished speaking, the entire assembly area cheered - this "Coffee Technology Pioneer" title is a technical certification with great value in the industry.
As a technician who participated in this project throughout the process, I clearly remember a late night three years ago. At that time, a boutique coffee farm in Yunnan sent an urgent call saying that their million-dollar Gesha beans were damp during transportation and the inside of the packaging bag was full of water droplets. It was this accident that made us determined to overcome the pain point of coffee packaging machines in terms of freshness preservation.
The most wonderful thing about this award-winning intelligent fresh-locking technology is that it can sense the status of coffee beans in real time. Traditional coffee packaging machines can only mechanically evacuate, but our equipment is like a "breathing butler" for each bag of coffee: when it detects that coffee beans release carbon dioxide, it will automatically turn on the micro-permeability mode; when encountering a sudden change in environmental humidity, it can instantly start double-layer sealing. At the Brazilian Coffee Expo last year, a farm owner stared at the demonstration machine for half an hour, and finally gave a thumbs up and said: "This is a packaging machine that understands coffee."
Modular design is another trump card for us. Now this coffee packaging machine can quickly switch configurations like a Transformer - in the morning, it is still processing aluminum film packaging of Italian deep roasted beans, and in the afternoon it can switch to filter paper packaging for drip coffee. Last month, the production line of a popular coffee brand in Hangzhou was renovated, and their technical director joked: "Your equipment should be renamed the 'Swiss Army Knife of Coffee Packaging Machines'".
What makes me most proud is seeing the changes in the customer's warehouse. In the past, coffee brands always put deoxidizers in the packaging bags. Now, our equipment can directly lock in freshness, which not only saves the cost of auxiliary materials, but also extends the shelf life by one third. Once I went to the Shanghai customer warehouse for random inspection, and saw the words "ply-pack technical support" printed on the neatly stacked coffee bags. The sense of accomplishment was more refreshing than drinking ten cups of espresso.
This time, the award-winning judging panel specifically mentioned our "coffee bean preservation solution" - through the combination of seven-layer composite materials and adaptive sealing technology, the packaging bags can not only block light but also not be afraid of transportation bumps. I remember that during the testing phase, we filled the equipment with more than 20 kinds of coffee beans from light roasting to dark roasting. The coffee in the R&D room was so fragrant that it could be smelled even in the corridor. Colleagues in the next laboratory even came to protest that "I was too greedy to concentrate on work."
When I took a photo with the trophy, the words of the factory director made my eyes hot: "This title is not the end, but a reminder that we must better understand the breathing rhythm of coffee." Next month, our R&D team will fly to Colombia to participate in the exhibition with a new coffee packaging machine. If you see a device emitting a faint blue light while packaging coffee at the exhibition - don't doubt it, we must be testing new freshness-preserving black technology!
