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New family of carton erectors in response to customer demands

In a pro-active response to customer demands German top load and cartoning machine specialist, Vepatec has extended its family of top load carton erectors for the food, confectionery and snack industries with the launch of the new KA-Series.

The new KA-Series of machines is claimed to offer massive savings over end load and crash lock cartoning systems and is capable of erecting a wide variety of carton styles and carton shapes in either corrugated or solid board. These include: with or without hinged lids, triangular, hexagonal and octagonal cartons, and double-wall, frame-wall and wave-shaped cartons; and tapered trays for transit display packs for use in the snacks and confectionery sectors.

The twin lane KA-390-S is particularly suitable for ready meal trays and for difficult triangular sandwich wedge packs and is capable of erecting150 cartons/minute. As with other machines in the new KA-Series it employs a rotary principle through which blanks are extracted from the magazine onto the male forming heads which index in four 90 degree cycles, during which they have glue applied and are formed using an indexing female forming tool.

The KA390’s has the ability to run two different carton styles at the same time, for example, a base and lid, or two different sizes/formats.

The new KA 490-S carton erector is capable of handling larger sized cartons (die cut blanks of up to 750mm x 950mm) at speeds of up to 50/minute in corrugated or other board materials. It forms part of an integrated system recently installed at an Australian ice-cream company, where it is linked to a Vepatec product handling system that automatically loads ice-cream tubs into boxes in three different collations.

Just to make the project more challenging, the conical tubs had to be oriented “top to tail” to maximise carton utilisation, prior to being placed in the cartons using a Vepatec servo operated Triplex pick and place system.

The compact KA290-S operates at up to 65 cartons/minute and has been installed by leading Swedish Cookie manufacturer Gille Bagaren to pack Cookies for Ikea. Benefits of the machine include: extremely small footprint together with the flexibility to handle different carton styles and types, and the ability to run three-shift operation, 7 days/week.

All of the machines are available with standard hot melt application systems, or heat-seal versions with hot air guns.

Represented in the UK and Ireland by Partners in Packaging Ltd, of Heywood, Manchester, Managing Director Duncan Macintyre said, “The all new KA-Series is yet another example of Vepatec’s responsiveness to customer demands and its expertise in developing machinery to handle difficult products and shapes.”