Induction Sealer Prevents Leaks
What if your current product’s shelf life could extend from weeks to years? What if the same packaging breakthrough actually reduced your cost of production? And what if this packaging technology was in the form of the highly popular single serve format?
These are the types of things Ted Casey (CEO Dry Bev International) thinks about when he is dreaming up his next invention. Except he’s not dreaming, he’s actually patented a packaging technology and built a custom packaging line to prove his theory.
The bottle features two sealed compartments which prevent the powdered ingredients from mixing with the liquid until the consumer is prepared to use the product. This design offers numerous ingredient, production, economic and convenience benefits.
Casey says. “Cost of goods sold is much lower than using comparable aseptic technology. First, energy use is considerably lower since the product is never heated. Secondly, since the product is never heated we can use heat sensitive raw ingredients, and we can make heat sensitive flavors. Coffee and Tea flavors in particular. Our process doesn’t impart the cooked flavor notes to the products.”
Since active ingredients are stored in a separate hermetically sealed compartment packagers can forego the use of preservatives and still benefit from extended shelf life. And shipping and storage requirements are simplified as no refrigeration is needed.
Induction sealer key to package integrity
"The key to making this container a viable packaging option was to prove a packaging line could be developed that was reliable and scalable", says Casey.
His packaging line in Dallas Texas is currently producing single serve nutritional sports supplements. It features a rotary liquid filler, a rotary powder filler, a patent pending inserter for the dry product reservoir, automated closure system and induction cap sealer.
“The induction sealer was key to ensuring the package’s integrity and Enercon was the only company that could make it happen,” says Casey.
The bottle has a single threaded cap, but the induction liner needs to create a hermetic seal on both the exterior and opening on the bottle mouth and the inner compartment housing the dry product.
In most cases an induction sealer is designed to focus most of the sealing energy on the outside of the container, but in this case a more even heat dispersion was required. Enercon’s engineers were able to configure a special Super Seal™ Max cap sealer featuring a special power supply and sealing head that is able to produce a hermetic seal on both orifices.
Using one induction liner to hermetically seal both compartments was truly an innovation. The application was so unique that the package earned recognition in Enercon’s 2016 Induction Sealing Hall of Fame Class of 2016.
Endless application for possibilities for new package
Casey sees the nutritional products production line as just the beginning for applications this package can serve. “We’ve had interest from pharmaceutical companies where precise dosing is important for products like antibiotics,” says Casey. Meanwhile CPG companies are investigating the benefits of modifying their filling and packaging lines to take advantage of this innovative new concept.