Walking into the assembly workshop of the ply-pack factory, three brand-new intelligent production lines are being debugged simultaneously. Technical Director Chen Gong pointed to one of the three-meter-high devices and told reporters: "This is the fourth-generation vertical packaging machine that we spent 18 months developing. We just got the EU CE certification last month, and now the orders have been scheduled until the first quarter of next year."
This silver-gray device is demonstrating the automated packaging process of milk powder cans: the robot arm accurately grabs the can body and feeds it into the vertical packaging machine. The film completes a series of actions such as bag making, filling, vacuuming, and sealing in the vertical channel. The whole process is as smooth as flowing water. According to the on-site engineer, compared with traditional horizontal equipment, this vertical packaging machine not only saves 40% of floor space, but also because of its unique vertical operation mode, it is particularly suitable for handling fragile and extruded puffed foods and baked products.
"Last year, an old brand of peach cake company came to us and said that they always had a 5% breakage rate when using traditional equipment for packaging." Engineer Chen said while calling up the equipment monitoring screen, "After replacing our vertical packaging machine, by optimizing the vertical drop system and buffer device, the packaging completeness rate of the entire production line is now stable at more than 98%. "What surprised the customer even more was that the AI visual inspection module built into the equipment can remove defective products with loose seals in real time, which can be called a double upgrade of "quality inspector + packer" in the pastry industry.
In terms of intelligent control, the new generation of vertical packaging machines has shown amazing adaptability. The reporter saw at the scene that the operator tapped the touch screen a few times, and the equipment switched from 500g of red dates to 50g of daily nuts packaging mode. This flexible production feature is in line with the current market demand for small batches and multiple categories. The production supervisor of a popular snack brand reported: "It used to take 2 hours to shut down for debugging, but now with a vertical packaging machine, you only need to replace the mold to quickly switch production, and the equipment utilization rate has increased by 30%."
It is worth mentioning that the food-grade design details of the vertical packaging machine. The material contact surface is made of mirror stainless steel, and it is equipped with a detachable cleaning component to solve the most troublesome oil residue problem in the baking industry. The person in charge of a sesame paste company who was inspecting the equipment on site lamented: "In the past, cleaning the equipment required disassembling more than 20 parts, but now it is as simple as disassembling and assembling Lego blocks, and the saved man-hours can run two more batches of goods."
In terms of energy saving and environmental protection, the R&D team has also made breakthroughs. By improving the temperature control system of the heat sealing knife, the energy consumption of the vertical packaging machine is reduced by 18% compared with the previous generation, which means considerable cost optimization for food companies that operate 16 hours a day. What's more clever is that the scrap film generated when the equipment is running can be recycled and granulated in real time, truly realizing "zero waste production".
Now is the peak season for mooncake production during the Mid-Autumn Festival. Many time-honored food factories have chosen vertical packaging machines for gift box outer film packaging. "It is necessary to show traditional cultural elements and ensure moisture-proof transportation, which poses a double challenge to packaging equipment." Chen Gong pointed to the equipment that was packaging mooncakes and explained, "We have specially developed a cultural paper film compatibility mode, so that the packaging film of the intangible cultural heritage paper-cutting pattern can also be packaged at high speed."
As the reporter visited in depth, he found that this vertical packaging machine still has a lot of "black technology". When the equipment detects that the ambient humidity exceeds the standard, it will automatically start the preparatory drying program; in the event of a sudden power outage, the unfinished packaging process will generate a traceability code; it can even predict the loss of parts through vibration frequency analysis, and truly implement preventive maintenance.
Standing in front of the digital dashboard, the real-time jumping data confirms the market popularity of the vertical packaging machine: the current online equipment handles more than 2 million packaging tasks per day, saving more than 800 tons of packaging consumables. When we asked about future plans, Engineer Chen pointed to the 5G module being tested and revealed: "In the next stage, we will let the vertical packaging machine learn 'cross-device dialogue' to achieve intelligent collaboration of the entire production line."
When leaving, the assembly workshop was doing the final debugging for the vertical packaging machine shipped to Southeast Asia. The setting sun shines through the glass window on the shiny machine body, as if putting on golden armor for these "intelligent craftsmen" who are about to travel far away. In the wave of intelligent transformation of the food packaging industry, vertical packaging machines are writing new industry standards - not only "beautiful packaging", but also "smart packaging".
