Product category:
General packaging materials, equipment and services
News Release from: Packaging Automation | Subject: PA182
Edited by the Manufacturingtalk Editorial
Team on 17 January 2005
Heat Sealing Vegetables Alternative To
Sleeving
Packaging Automation's dealings with its newest customer were an object lesson in how to win friends and influence people.
Packaging Automation's dealings with its newest customer were an object lesson in how to win friends and influence people Pure Foods, a west Lancashire (UK) company producing prepared vegetable and fruit products for supermarkets like Budgens and Spar, as well as other outlets, had only been trading two years when it was persuaded it needed a heat-sealing machine
This article was originally published on Manufacturingtalk on 13 May 2005 at 8.00am (UK)
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The company's general manager Jill Bellwood, who had been there at the start of the enterprise, looked at a range of machines from a variety of companies before opting for Packaging Automation.
Mrs Bellwood explained her decision: "It was as much the way we were treated as anything else that made us choose Packaging Automation.
They were just so nice and friendly.
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They invited me over to the factory, which was another nice touch and all in all they were a lot more friendly and a lot more helpful than the rest and that's what did it for me." As a result a PA182 semi-automatic, hand-turned rotary table machine, which is heat-sealing lids to packages of Mediterranean vegetables, stuffed peppers and mushrooms, cheese and leek bake, jacket potatoes, fruit salads and apple wedges, amongst other products.
Originally, the intention had been to deal in organic produce but Pure Foods' decided that there was little call for such measures.
So the company adapted into traditionally grown varieties that are all hand-prepared.
Bellwood described the reason for going down the heat-sealing route by saying: "This is our first machine and came about because the supermarkets, while not exactly pushing, were suggesting that this was the way everybody else was going.
We did not want to sleeve any of our products because that might have suggested we had something to hide." So Pure Foods, with just 10 employees, followed much bigger companies down the heat-sealing road and has not regretted it.
The company might be small, but it knows what it wants, she added.
After the PA182, with its claimed quick and easy tool change and modified atmosphere gas flushing option had arrived at the Pure Foods kitchens in Freckleton, near Preston, further training took place.
"After a few days, a couple of the staff were having trouble adapting to a new way of working.
So Packaging Automation sent people over and they spent a whole day going through it with them.
That was another nice touch." Packaging Automation's commercial manager Samantha Ashton commented: "Every company likes to hear nice things said about its operation, and we are no different.
We always try to give customers exactly what they want and do it in a friendly and helpful way.
That seems to be paying off.".
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