DRY JARS MAKE LABELLING QUICKER AND EASIER FOR UNILEVER

Sleeving jars on Unilever’s Calve Mayonnaise bottling line at Delft, Holland, has been made easier by a Powerstrip drying system from Secomak, a division of Klaxon Signals Ltd.

Up to 550 jars every minute are filled with mayonnaise, vacuum-sealed with steam and labelled at the plant. Water remaining on the jars after sealing was making sleeving difficult. When passing through the shrink tunnel, any moisture left on the jars caused the sleeves to stick, rather than slide on smoothly in preparation for shrink fitting. Secomak’s Powerstrip system ensures that this no longer happens.

Powerstrip now incorporates a unique four-wire container guidance system. This allows the air knives to be positioned as close as possible to the product, resulting in more efficient drying compared to the original guard rails which could disrupt air flow, leaving the product wet in some areas.

On the Unilever site, changing the positioning of the knives to accommodate the five different jar sizes, ranging between 250ml and 1000ml, can now be achieved within five minutes, and the guidance rail system means that one Powerstrip system can handle the entire range. Secomak’s system now dries the jars both before and after sleeving takes place.

Secomak air knives use low pressure, high velocity air to remove moisture, dust and waste material from almost any surface. They are ideal for drying bottles and cans, tubes and extrusions, sheet material, components or any other products which need to be dried externally. Energy costs can also be cut by up to 90% compared to other drying methods.