Coating cuts bag making costs and time

UK bag manufacturer Parkside International has eliminated the need for a costly PTFE tape, reduced machine downtime and saved energy by using a hard wearing, non stick Apticote coating supplied by Poeton Industries.

Barnsley based Parkside produces wicketted, windle and draw tape bags for products as diverse as bread, fresh produce, wet wipes and disposable nappies. During the high volume manufacturing process, heated sealer heads are used to close parts of the bags. To prevent the plastics film from sticking to the heads, Parkside had been applying a special Teflon/PTFE tape. However, whilst the tape was effective it was also expensive and caused frequent machine hold-ups, as it needed replacing after a sealing run of just six hours. The company needed to find a more cost effective alternative to the tape and contacted Poeton.

“We recommended Apticote 810TP, a hard wearing, non stick coating that is particularly suited to packaging applications,” says Poeton’s Trevor Amos. “An initial trial on the sealing heads in just one machine, proved so successful that Parkside is now running coated heads on two machines and planning to use them on the remaining two machines in the near future.”

Parkside says Apticote 810TP has substantially improved the efficiency and productivity of the two machines by eliminating the downtime needed to replace tape every six hours, as well as the cost of the tape itself. There is also a useful reduction in energy costs, as the coated heads are able to operate at a lower temperature – down from 170 to 150degC.

The sealing heads are said to have been running on both machines without problems, and operators are reporting that plastics residue from the process that used to stick to the tape is now easily wiped from the coated heads.

Summing up a significant hidden benefit of Apticote versus tape, Parkside spokesman Steve Bradley says: “Within the company there is also increased confidence in the bag sealing process across the range of products and we believe this will also result in greater customer confidence.”

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Poeton Industries