Kite Packaging to attend London Packaging Week
The employee share-owned packaging company is set to exhibit at London Packaging Week at ExCel London from Thursday 21st – Friday 22nd September. Kite Packaging will be stationed at stand C82 where they will be sharing their industry expertise and showcasing an array of packaging products and solutions.
Kite, a company rooted in providing affordable, effective and eco-friendly packaging to UK businesses, will be exhibiting packaging for takeaways, bottles, chilled products, ecommerce and gifting.
Amongst the showcase will be Kite’s comprehensive range of shredded and tissue papers for gift packaging, and flexi-hex and corrugated sleeves for bottles. Also included will be kraft takeaway boxes and bowls, insulated box liners and postal boxes.
Kite’s packaging specialists are available for consultations on both days and will be happy to address any questions and queries. Those seeking to embrace circular packaging practices and explore sustainable alternatives to traditional packaging methods will find valuable insights, solutions and support available.
To discover more about Kite Packaging and the products and services they offer, please visit www.kitepackaging.co.uk.
Jnck Bakery redefining “Junk food” with Zero HFSS Cookies
Jnck Bakery is revolutionising the fresh bakery market with its range of delicious cookies, which have 90% less sugar, 50% less saturated fat, 3x protein and 5x fibre compared to existing products.
The category-first range of fresh, chewy cookies has been created in response to rising consumer demands for healthier, more sustainable treats: they have been rated zero HFSS, do not include any palm oil and contain pea protein to support gut health.
Available in four flavours (Milky Chocolate, Trippple Chocolate, White Gold Chocolate and White Ruby Chocolate), the 48g cookies are ideally suited for retail or foodservice, with a distinctive brand design that specifically promotes indulgence and fun. The cookies can be supplied loose in pre-baked or unbaked cases of 24, or pre-baked in single and multipacks. All packaging is sustainable.
Comments Alex: “The growth of the protein snacks market shows there is a demand for a much healthier approach to grab and go food, but we felt strongly that we could create products that still tasted, felt and looked like indulgent treats, as opposed to high-protein gym products. Our cutting-edge sweetness modulation means Jnck Bakery products deliver without all the sugar and fat: no mean feat, as these elements bring so much more than just taste and texture. We have used a range of techniques to develop the desired high quality, sweet, chewy, crunchy, cookie. And by tripling the protein and adding prebiotic fibre, we have enhanced the nutrition and looked after gut health. The results have to be tasted to be believed, and we are delighted to bring these products to market.”
Spiroflow launches next-generation twin-line bulk bag filling system
Leading materials handling specialist, Spiroflow, an Automated Handling Solutions (AHS) company, has launched a next-generation twin-line bulk bag filling system. Following extensive research and development, the new system addresses the limitations of slow, outdated equipment that was prone to spillages and excessive product and dust emissions.
Introducing several key features that significantly enhance production capacity, weigh accuracy and operator ergonomics, the twin-line system is able to handle up to 20 x 500kg bulk bags per hour on each process line – a total of 40 bulk bags. Weigh accuracy is a key aspect of the new system as it achieves an impressive -0/+500g per bulk bag – this precision ensures consistent and accurate filling of each bag, minimising product waste and optimising inventory management processes.
One of the system’s notable design innovations is the incorporation of a raising and lowering filling head, specifically engineered to improve the ergonomic load of empty bags for operators. This feature aims to enhance operator comfort and safety, reducing the risk of workplace injuries.
The integration of auto-release hooks and roller conveyors streamlines the entire filling process, allowing for seamless and automated transfer of full bulk bags from the filler to the conveyors. This automation minimises the need for manual intervention, further enhancing efficiency.
With a strong emphasis on housekeeping, each filler is equipped with an integrated and independent dust extraction and filter system. This ensures that product and dust emissions are minimised, maintaining a clean and safe workspace for both operators and the environment.
The system includes a customised platform design that complements its functions and facilitates operator workflows to optimise operational efficiency. This design consideration ensures smooth operations and enhances the overall performance of the filling system.
The inclusion of an automated roller conveyor system enables the smooth transfer of full bulk bags throughout the entire system, significantly reducing the need for manual handling and increasing overall throughput. In addition, the auto-dispensing pallet system efficiently places the pallet in position before loading the empty bag, simplifying the bag-loading process and saving valuable operator time.
Safety is a top priority in the design of the new bulk bag-filling system. The equipment is fully enclosed with safety fencing and features interlocked access gates to prevent unauthorised access while ensuring that the equipment operates safely and efficiently.
The new bulk bag filling system combines enhanced production capacity, precise weigh accuracy, ergonomic design, automation, safety features, and customised platform design to create a state-of-the-art filling solution that optimises efficiency, minimises waste and ensures a safe working environment.
“We are excited to introduce this revolutionary double bulk bag filling system, which addresses our clients’ needs for increased productivity, accuracy, and safety,” said Spiroflow’s Rhodri Jones. “This advanced technology not only enhances operations, but also contributes to a more sustainable and efficient working environment. The new system is currently in use with a powder manufacturing company, where it has considerably improved throughput, safety and efficiency.”
Automated Handling Solutions (AHS), is set to join forces with Advanced Material Processing (AMP), integrating Kason Corporation and Marion Process Solutions, to showcase their material processing equipment and solutions on stand F54 at the PPMA show, at Birmingham’s NEC, UK and on stand 4-309 at POWTECH, Nuremberg, Germany, both between the 26 – 28 September.
Britvic to make £22.5m investment in sixth bottling line at London factory
Soft drinks manufacturer, Britvic, is investing £22.5 million in its sixth bottling line at its East London factory in Beckton – creating 18 new jobs in the community.
With product demand growing, the new line is designed to help support Britvic’s long-term growth ambitions in Britain – increasing production capacity at the site by nearly 30%.
The new line, which was officially opened by Britvic CEO Simon Litherland, chairman Ian Durant and supply chain director Nigel Paine, will produce some of UK’s favourite brands including Tango and Pepsi MAX – with the first products expected to hit shelves in early September.
Nigel Paine, supply chain director at Britvic, said: “Opening the sixth bottling line at Beckton marks the latest milestone in a series of investments into our supply chain.
“As we continue to grow and meet increasing demand, boosting our capacity at the Beckton site allows us to keep delivering on our goals and create a resilient business.”
Boasting state-of-the-art manufacturing equipment, the sixth line unlocks new technological capabilities – allowing for faster and more efficient production.
As the site completes the line’s commissioning process, new team members will begin on a 12-week training course, to equip them with the technical expertise needed to manage the new installation.
The new recruits will be working in engineering and manufacturing roles and brings the total site headcount to over 240 people.
This follows the recent news of an £8 million investment to improve energy efficiency at the site, as Britvic redoubles its efforts to cut carbon emissions and save energy. Britvic has partnered with GEA to deliver the cutting-edge project, with the installation commencing this summer to make Beckton sustainable for the future.
Over the past few years, Britvic has also invested nearly £40 million in its Rugby factory – installing new canning lines – and £19 million to upgrade its national distribution centre.
Arla Foods Ingredients and Zhongbai Xingye sign new agreement to advance Chinese nutrition business
Arla Foods Ingredients and Zhongbai Xingye Food Technology (Beijing) Co., Ltd (Zhongbai) have signed a new distribution agreement to serve the Chinese food and nutrition markets.
Zhongbai is part of the Brenntag Group, a global leader in chemicals and ingredients distribution. It has a strong and long-standing working relationship with Arla Foods Ingredients, which offers a broad range of premium food and nutrition ingredient solutions in China and globally.
In a collaboration spanning more than 15 years, the two companies have significantly grown their share of the Chinese market. The new agreement, which is effective immediately, will cover the full range of Arla Foods Ingredients’ business units, focusing on solutions for three key segments:
- Infant Nutrition: With Chinese parents increasingly demanding premium products, the partnership will focus on helping manufacturers improve the nutritional profile of formula and other products for infants and toddlers.
- Performance Nutrition: There is high potential for further growth in China’s performance nutrition market, which includes sports nutrition, nutrition for seniors, and dietary supplements.
- Food and beverage: The two companies see strong growth potential in segments such as bakery and beverages.
Specialty Colombian coffee roasters Hermanos brings a new Exotic Coffee Subscription and Tasting Kit to the nation
This August, specialty Colombian coffee roasters Hermanos launch a new Exotic Coffee Subscription as part of their mission to bring their native culture to the world, through coffee. Alongside this, Hermanos have launched a Tasting Kit, containing six of their best beans – perfect for an at-home tasting session or a gift for the coffee enthusiast in your life.
Hermanos – which literally translates as ‘brothers’ in Spanish – was founded by siblings Victor and Santiago Gamboa, and good friend Adnan Millwala; together, their passion is to bring the warmth, vibrancy, and originality of Colombia to the world, with heritage at the heart of everything they do.
The special nature of Colombian coffee beans comes from several things working together, from the unique climate and growing conditions, to the way beans are grown and harvested by farmers. Hermanos represents Colombian coffee at its finest; Victor, Santiago and Adnan launched Hermanos to bring the very best of Colombian specialty coffee and traditional practices to the UK.
Because of the sheer diversity of flavour profiles across the many coffee producing regions, there’s no single way to describe coffee from this country. In addition to their Classic Coffee Subscription, on 31st August Hermanos launch a new Exotic Coffee Subscription which will be a showcase into the country’s exotic beans, offering unique handpicked coffees, from different regions and farmers across Colombia.
Customers will receive a curated selection of exotic coffee beans, which includes: Koji, Pijao Gesha, Yellow Fruits, San Odolfo and El Eden, with many more new exotic coffees being added regularly to the offering. Positioned comfortably at the premium end of the market, the Exotic Coffee Subscription is priced at £29.50 per 250g bag, and customers can opt to have their coffee delivered for free, to the grind and delivery frequency of their choice.
The newly launched Tasting Kit is a combination of six of Hermanos’ best beans, each with differing tasting notes to experience the full spectrum of coffees on offer. The Tasting Kit single-origin coffees include Finca Las Flores, Maria Torres, Hacienda El Calapo, El Fresno, Hoyo Frio and Pijao Gesha. The kits are available in 50g bags priced at £28.00 or 100g bags at £46.00; and customers can choose their grind preference, including whole bean, espresso, french press, pour-over, filter, and more.
Hermanos was first established in 2018, when they launched their first pop-up in Walthamstow, and has now grown to open coffee shops across nine neighbourhoods of London, with plans to continue growing across the capital, the UK and internationally. Honouring their values as a responsible and sustainable coffee brand, they bring the very best Colombian specialty coffee to the UK. Through dialogue and direct trade, Hermanos have built sustainable relationships with farmers and producers to overcome challenges faced by the coffee sector.
Ginsters launch new packaging identity
Ginsters, the No 1 brand in Savoury Pastry, has announced a major change to its pack identity across the brand’s product portfolio, with a bold and exciting new design, that reflects more taste, more personality, and more quality. This is a significant moment for the Ginsters brand and one that is designed to bring excitement into the category, with the new packs set to hit shelves from 30 August 2023.
Ginsters is proud to have delivered delicious real honest food to the nation for more than fifty years, due to its exceptional baking heritage and expertise. Today, the brand still enjoys extremely high levels of brand salience and has delivered 5 years of consecutive RSV growth.
Now is the right time to evolve the brand’s identity, telling the story behind the high-quality ingredients and locally sourced vegetables, whilst enhancing taste appeal.
Over the past few years Ginsters has focused on communicating its provenance and ingredient story, delivering a stronger, more positive association with quality ingredients. Ginsters products are crafted with no artificial colours, flavourings or preservatives and use locally sourced vegetables and only using 100% British Meat – all of which have increased significance and drive meaningfulness and trust with consumers.
Ginsters’ brief to top brand identity design agency Bloom, looked for a simple design solution that was instantly ownable and distinctive for the brand. A design solution that balanced both the emotional and functional benefits of taste, provenance, and ingredients, with a sense of dynamism and an upbeat personality, to deliver impact and stand out at fixture.
Speaking about the new design, Bloom added: “As an antidote to the monochromatic grey tones of the current packaging, Ginsters’ brighter brand identity and newly evolved brand positioning deliberately evokes more emotion and wholesomeness of the delicious product inside.”
Ginsters predict that the investment in the new identity will drive growth and increased penetration for the brand, via recruitment of new shoppers wanting a delicious, quick, and nutritious meal solution and inspiration to try the tasty new packs at shelf. The design will also drive education about provenance and ingredients, delivering higher consumer brand associations such as ‘quality ingredients’ and ‘tastier than other brands’.
Speaking about the new design, brand identity agency Bloom said: “Our Design and Illustration team created a world of colourful Cornish attitude. The illustration draws inspiration from Ginsters’ heritage and the west-country landscape. We’ve captured the brand’s core taste and quality along with its warm, unique Cornish personality. With a new vibrant colour palette, delicious photography and illustrative assets, the bold new identity is quintessentially Cornish and unmistakeably Ginsters.”
Commenting on the new brand identity effect on the category, Ginsters Marketing Director, Emma Stowers said: “We believe our bold new brand identity will excite our retail partners and will help build on Ginsters’ position as the beacon brand for the category. The new design delivers standout and visibility which in turn will benefit the category by attracting more shoppers to the fixture, while also making the portfolio easier to shop, which will aid conversion – a win-win situation for all.”
Closure of Young’s Seafood factory confirmed
Over 200 jobs are set to be lost after Young’s Seafood confirmed the closure of a Grimsby factory.
Plans were revealed in June to stop production at its Marsden Road site and move what remains to its other Grimsby factory on Humberstone Road and a Scottish site.
At the time the owner of Young’s, Sofina Foods Europe, said the factory was “no longer financially sustainable,” according to BBC reports.
Staff and unions were set to be consulted before a formal decision on the closure. Now, however, the business has said it has been unable to find a viable solution.
Production at the site will be scaled back and cease in late October 2023.
Some new roles are expected to be created at the Humberstone Road site in Grimsby and in Scotland at Fraserburgh.
Using big data on livestock farms could improve antimicrobial resistance surveillance
A new study suggests that using big data and machine learning in antimicrobial resistance (AMR) surveillance in livestock production methods could help inform interventions and offer protections against germs that are becoming resistant to antibiotics.
Over two and a half years, researchers at the University of Nottingham analysed microbiomes from chickens, carcasses and environments. The resulting network of correlations between livestock, environments, microbial communities and antimicrobial resistance suggests multiple routes for improving antimicrobial resistance surveillance in livestock production.
The research, led by Dr Tania Dottorini, Professor of Bioinformatics, used a data-mining approach based on machine learning in ten large-scale chicken farms and four connected abattoirs from three provinces in China – one of the largest consumers of antimicrobials. The use of antimicrobials used to prevent and treat infections in livestock production on farms is associated with the rise of antimicrobial resistant (AMR) infections.
The study, published in Nature Food, identified several antimicrobial resistant genes (ARGs) that were shared between chickens and the farms they lived on that are potentially highly transmissible.
The findings also show that a core subset of the chicken gut microbiome, featuring clinically relevant bacteria and antibiotic resistance genes correlates with AMR profiles of E. coli, colonizing the gut. Notably, this core, which contains clinically high transmissible ARGs shared by chickens and environments, is influenced by environmental temperature and humidity, and correlates with antimicrobial usage.
Antimicrobial resistance (AMR) is one of the top 10 global public health threats facing humanity according to the World Health Organization. AMR threatens the effective prevention and treatment of an ever-increasing range of infections caused by bacteria, parasites, viruses, and fungi.
Around 600 million cases of food-borne disease, resulting in approximately 420,000 deaths, occurs worldwide every year. Within this, nearly 300 million illnesses and 200,000 deaths are caused by diarrheagenic E. coli globally.
In many countries, chickens are housed in sheds that do not have an effective climate control system, and therefore experience substantial temperature and humidity variations. The study results indicate that the core features of the gut microbial community and resistome, found to be correlated with resistance in E. coli, are also correlated with changes in temperature and humidity in chicken housing.
The associations between environmental variables, and the species and genes associated with AMR, present opportunities for the development of novel AMR monitoring solutions, especially in low-middle-income countries where these variables are not controlled and pose a risk to the animals that are exposed to changes in them.
Dr Tania Dottorini, Professor of Bioinformatics, University of Nottingham, says: “The spread of antimicrobial resistant microorganisms and AMR at the human-animal-environment level and food interface is a major global concern. The transmission of AMR can take place through different routes and pathways, and the food chain, either indirectly via food consumption or directly through contaminated food-animal handling and manure or faecal contamination is a relevant one.
“We have demonstrated how methodologies can be developed that can associate a wide array of microbial species and genes with observable AMR, and further assessed how those are associated with the environmental variables of temperature and humidity. Next, we must consider all relevant and interconnected AMR datasets in a 360° approach, which will deepen our understanding and control of AMR spread.
“This is an exciting moment. We are ready to invest in new AI-powered AMR integrated surveillance approaches to identify the drivers and the mechanisms underlying the insurgence and spread of AMR, and of new genetic variants of resistant pathogens across animals, environment, humans, and food. This will be ground-breaking.” Lightweight but with a substantial effect: Krones wins German Packaging Prize in “Sustainability” category
5.9 grams – the extremely low weight of the ShoulderFlex bottle was the deciding factor for this year’s jury of the German Packaging Prize in the “Sustainability” category. That is because the ShoulderFlex makes a crucial contribution towards reducing the carbon footprint of water bottlers by yielding material savings of up to 50 per cent compared to conventional 0.5-litre water bottles on the market.
Krones’ revolutionary bottle design can be used to make containers that are sustainable and weigh very little, but its advantages are also apparent during the bottle production and processing stages. The bottles have excellent stackability even without the stabilising effect of nitrogen pressurisation, with a filled topload of up to 40 kilograms.
“One of the key messages in Krones’ vision is the responsible use of packaging materials. And that includes developing sustainable packaging solutions that are not only resource-economical but also practicable. ShoulderFlex meets those requirements in full,” explains Martin Loistl and Jochen Forsthövel, both members of the development team.
“Despite the smaller amounts of PET needed to produce them, these containers are in no way inferior to conventional bottles currently on the market as far as stability and convenience are concerned.”