The machine has been designed with the latest convenient packaging shapes from the company in mind, including boxes with rounded sides and eight corner boxes. It is being shown off for the first time at packaging technology and materials show Emballage 2012 in Paris.
Gerard Mathieu, DS Smith development and marketing director for France, told FoodProductionDaily.com the equipment was the latest line in a range of form-fill-seal units created specifically by the business.
"We introduced an eight corner bag-in-box designed to fit into a fridge door and the hand. This year we are launching a round one, which is completely new and we have developed a whole line to form, fill and seal the box.
High accuracy
"We form the box around a mandrel, which provides very high accuracy, eject it and transfer it under the filling heads. Then we have an integrated sealer. If you change the shape of the mandrel, you can make round, square, four, six or eight corner boxes."
He said the machine was suitable for manufacturers of a variety of finished products and ingredients for catering, business to business or consumer lines, from wine, fruit juice, milk and olive oil to liquid eggs and sauces.
It occupies just 15 sq m of floor space in a factory and can handle boxes ranging upwards in size from two litres. It could, for example, produce 15 three-litre boxes a minute, said Mathieu. DS Smith supplied both the packaging and the machine itself, he added.
Rounded boxes and six- to eight-cornered designs are increasingly favoured by the food and drink industry as they also allow firms to maximise the number of units they can pack in boxes and stack on retail shelves.