Packaging Foursome Team up for a Hole-in-One
Induction sealing with vented liners solves container bloating & leakage issues.
It’s a 90 degree hot summer day. You approach an immaculate green to find your bright white golf ball lies a mere eight feet away from the hole. Perspiration beads up on your forehead as you line up your eight foot birdie putt. You adjust your grip. Then it hits you. How do they keep these greens so green in this weather?
During rain, heat, drought and everything in between it is a Greenkeeper’s job to keep golf courses in picture perfect condition. At Floratine Products Group, Inc. (Collierville, TN) they make it their business to know how to nurture grass to withstanding any condition.
Floratine products use foliar solutions combined with various organic components to formulate both liquid and dry nutrients to withstand the high traffic and demanding climates of golf courses, and sport turf. Floratine began its venture 20 years ago, with one product, now 54 products later it continues to grow at a rapid increase each year.
One of Floratine’s most popular products is called Perk Up™. When grass is under a great amount of heat stress it causes it to wilt. Perk Up™ contains a calcium complex which allows the respiratory system of the grass to slow and within hours of spraying the solution on the grass, it stands back up. It’s so effective customers often have it shipped overnight to revitalize their course in time of need.
“People pay greens fees, not brown fees.” says Darryl King, Director of Operations, “Superintendents and Greenkeepers rely on our products to keep their turf in top condition. We understand that their professional reputation and livelihood depend on the quality of the turfgrass they manage.”
Keeping Packaging on Par
While Floratine has established their expertise in turf management, they needed a hand in keeping their packaging on par. With the rapid increase of business Floratine found themselves sending their product around the world and to more diverse climates.Floratine’s products contain organic components which cause their products to off gas, making the containers bloat in warm temperatures and contract during cool temperatures. This affect created leaking problems and unusable jugs of product.
“Packaging the containers became tedious. We were tightening all the caps, using a hand held pneumatic capper and if we didn’t get the cap tighten just right, it resulted in a phone call from an unhappy customer with a leaky container or bloated jugs.” says King.
King knew it was time to call in the packaging experts to resolve his dilemma. Floratine has two packaging lines, one for 10 liter jugs and one for gallon jugs. Forty-eight out of the fifty-four products Floratine sells are liquid products which were in need of a new packaging solution.
Floratine had two packaging challenges: making sure the product didn’t leak during transport and preventing the bloating and contracting of the container. TricorBraun (St. Louis MO), Performance Systematix (Grand Rapids, MI) and Enercon Industries (Menomonee Falls, WI) teamed up with Floratine to create a foursome with a hole-in-one solution.
Performance Systematix and TricorBraun combined to find a perfect cap and liner combination for Floratine’s products while Enercon provided the technology to seal the deal.
Performance Systematix’s vented Circumvent® foam liner and a vented Airfoil® heat induction seal provides a tamper evident and leak proof seal that allows the product to breathe without leaking. In addition, they also use a cap which contains a tiny 0.188″ hole allowing the container to vent while still repelling the liquid product.
By incorporating these three components the container vents during transport and after the vented heat induction seal is removed by the end user. This solution addresses Floratine’s need for a leak free seal and the elimination of bloated or collapsed containers.
Three Rounds of Testing
Floratine first tested an induction sealer with an on-site demonstration from Enercon’s local representative George Richardson, of PMMR Inc. (Oakland, TN). Floratine also visited Enercon’s headquarters to take advantage of their free lab testing. In a final evaluation they were able to see Enercon’s Super Seal™ induction sealer on a packaging line with a nearby visit to Riceland Foods (Stuttgart, AR) where they ran some of their own jugs and caps under Riceland’s Super Seal™ induction sealer.
“The true test was when one of my co-workers took off the cap and stood on the bottle with only the sealed liner holding the product and it didn’t burst,” jokes King.
The Super Seal™ induction sealer creates a hermetic seal for leak proof protection and added confidence of tamper evidence. The induction sealer creates an electromagnetic current, called an eddy current. When the capped bottles enter the electromagnetic current, the foil of the inner-seal generates electrical resistance, heating Performance Systematix’s Airfoil® vented liner and creating the seal. Floratine uses the “All-in-One” sealing head with their Super Seal™ induction sealer giving them the flexibility to shift the induction sealer between their two lines without having to change the sealing head.
“We rely only on premium packaging equipment for our premium product. You can’t put a price tag on dependability. Customer complaints are nearly eliminated, 99% of our problems were solved with the induction sealer. It was a godsend,” says King.
