News on Packaging Equipment from Northern America

ConAgra Foods announced today the winners of its 2011 Sustainable Development Awards, an internal awards program intended to drive and reward innovative approaches to sustainability that produce tangible business results.

Lantech has extended the warranty period for its Q Series Semi Automatic and Simple Automation stretch wrappers from three years to five years.

oma Systems, An ITW Company (NYSE: ITW) announced the introduction of a new “QuickShip” program intended to cut shipping times on a wide variety of its most popular sizes and configurations of metal detector systems.

In October last year we wrote in a PotatoPro Newsletter about biodegradable snack bags and addressed the noise issues Frito-lay had with their SunChips packaging. Now Frito-lay has reduced the noise of the biodegradable SunChips packaging and are now introducing Quieter 100% compostable SunChips bags.

International consumer packaged goods (CPG) companies and private label brands will enjoy sharpened insight into the latest processing and packaging innovations and trends when they visit the PMMI stand.

Walmart's plan is to reduce some pack sizes ahead of payday and then revert to larger sizes afterward, so shoppers can leverage volume purchases.

The Food Processing Suppliers Association (FPSA) announced today that registration has opened for the 2011 PROCESS EXPO, taking place November 1-4, 2011 at McCormick Place in Chicago.

Pack Expo 2010 didn't seem to suffer any as a solo show for the first time in 14 years.

In flexible packaging, aluminum foil (hereafter foil) is the benchmark for barrier substrates when the requirements are protection against gases, moisture, and light.

In the last PotatoPro Newsletter 'Chips bags from potato peel? Biodegradable snack packaging' we focused on the changes Frito-Lay was making to the 'noisy'biodegradable Sunchips bags. Sunchips original will continue to be sold in the 'noisy'compostable bags, but all other Sunchips versions will be packed in regular (non-compostable) packaging until an improved biodegradable packaging is developed.

This morning, with its partners and several guests from the food and packaging fields in attendance, Polytechnique Montréal inaugurated the NSERC/Saputo/Excel Pac Industrial Research Chair in Materials and films for safe, smart and sustainable (3S) packaging.

Boulder Canyon™ Natural Foods, a leading North American snack food manufacturer, has introduced a renewable, fully compostable pack for its line of All Natural Kettle Cooked Potato Chips.

Magnetic Products, Inc. (MPI), a worldwide provider of both magnetic and non-magnetic material handling solutions, is pleased to announce its partnership with Cassel Messtechnik GmbH.

Last week we included two articles on 'interactive'packaging and the use of labels to link to a website, video or application: