Events ATS Set for
Events ATS Set for Strong Presence at PPMA Total Show ATS at PPMA Total Show, Birmingham, Stand G74 Advanced Tooling Systems Group (ATS), one of the UK’s leading engineering service providers to the packaging, automotive, aerospace, moulding and tooling industries, will be making its debut at this year’s PPMA TOTAL Show to showcase the wide variety of solutions available from the company’s specialist Packaging Machinery division. Distilled from more than 35 years of skills and expertise from the group, ATS Packaging Machinery designs and supplies packing equipment and complete packing lines for end markets including Food & Beverage, FMCG, Cosmetic, Pharmaceutical, Chemical and Automotive. ATS Packaging will be featuring four of its latest machines on the stand, demonstrating a range of highperformance lidding and capping solutions The new FBL-150 jar lidding machine provides a fast and efficient automatic placement and tightening of metal Twist-Off (TO) and Press-on, Twist- Off (PT) closures onto glass jars and bottles with a vacuum seal. It is ideal for a variety of products including mayonnaise, ketchup, cooking sauces, pickled vegetables, jams and honey, with speeds of up to 500 jars/min. The RSC40 from ATS’s Omega range is a high-speed rotary capping machine, which can be supplied with up to 10-heads and offers speeds of up to 240bpm. It can accommodate both traditional magnetic clutch and advanced servo-controlled tightening technologies. The Gemini LSC40 Linear Servo Capping machine is a revolutionary new style of machine which removes the need for expensive bottle changeparts and allows the machine to be mounted over an existing conveyor system and moved between production lines for maximum flexibility. Dependant on the number of capping heads and bottle handling system selected, production of up to 80bpm is easily achievable. Also on show will be a model from ATS Packaging’s versatile range of bottle unscramblers that allow multiple container formats to be carefully sorted and orientated in a single machine system. The range has been designed and developed to provide an unrivalled combination of precision, quality and reliability. Group Managing Director, Adrian Gander, is looking forward to such a great opportunity to engage with new sectors at the PPMA Total Show: “During the last couple of testing years, ATS has taken the decision to continue investing in both our equipment and manufacturing capabilities, and this forward-thinking strategy is now paying off, both in profitability and exposure to exciting new sectors,” he commented. “ATS Packaging Machinery is at the forefront of driving our growth. We are really looking forward to meeting new potential clients and discussing innovative solutions at this important show.” fmt
Events Speed and Sustainability – Precision Robot Tray Brillopak at PPMA Show 2022, Birmingham Stand F30 Endless sustainable materials and pack styles continue to appease the market and challenge automation simultaneously. Brillopak, a leading UK end-of-line retail case loading specialist, will debut the multi-material handling capabilities of its new high-speed Tray & Punnet PAKer. The machine automatically packs trays and punnets into retail cases neatly and is ready for any material trend – now and in the future. Designed to help companies keep pace with increasing output of modern food and beverage production lines, while also adapting and transitioning from plastic to cardboard punnet packaging, Brillopak’s Tray & Punnet PAKer is the result of three years research and development, extensive in-house expertise and deep domain expertise. The 150 punnets-per-minute machine combines specialist robotics with patented servo-driven end effectors and then deploys them in a pickand-place operation that seamlessly addresses many of the challenges companies face when automating this traditionally manual process. “As well as dealing with the pliability of the thin plastic punnets, customers have asked us to cater for cardboard variants too, both of which they want packed at speed and in neatly presented configurations,” explains Peter Newman, Technical Director at Brillopak. “Dealing with any of these features in isolation is hard enough,” Newman continues, “but when you’re challenged with addressing all of them, simultaneously, it becomes much more… interesting. Fortunately, we have some superb engineers here and we were more than up to the task.” To deliver greater speed, while still maintaining control of the pack, one robot accurately picks and places trays into a layer formation. A second robot then closes them up into an array dimension, before picking an entire layer of punnets that fits neatly into the receiving plastic/cardboard case. This whole-layer approach also addresses misalignment issues created by single-punnet pick and place and delivers a neat retailer-ready appearance. Different packaging materials are handled equally well on the same machine using tailored packaging recipes and packagespecific end effectors. In this way, packs with new, environmentally sound packaging, which can be a tight fit in a container, can still be handled consistently. “The primary driver behind the machine’s development was from our customers,” explains David Jahn, sales director at Brillopak. “We were regularly being told ‘I need a solution to overcome the struggle of constantly trying to find new operators’. Automation was always going to be the answer, but it needs to deliver far more than just the ability to replace line-side personnel. “In this market efficiency is everything,” he adds. “The prices are set by the supermarkets, so our customers have to find economies in all the steps prior to final delivery. This machine is more than capable of meeting current demands and deploys a technological solution that will enable users to support what they don’t know will happen tomorrow!” At the PPMA event, Brillopak will be showcasing an array of its end-effector technologies, developed to meet a wide range of customer needs and packaging issues. fmt The 150 punnets-per-minute machine combines specialist robotics with patented servo-driven end effectors and then deploys them in a pick-and-place operation food Marketing & Technology • August 2022 47
