Introduction
Most people associate Texwrap wrappers with shrink applications. The typical application is when products are fed into a wrapper and exit the machine after being wrapped into a polyethylene or polyolefin film bag. The bagged product then passes through a shrink tunnel to shrink the film securely around the product. While this conventional use is a great application, many will miss the fact that the wrapper creates a sealed bag around the product as well. With the large increase in mailing bags for eCommerce, this is happening now more than ever. Al Kiggins talks about how he spots these opportunities and recommends them for automation.
What do you look for in ways to automate eCommerce applications?
One common application is automating manual bagging operations. This application typically looks like several of people working at a workbench pulling premade polyethylene bags out of a box, stuffing product into those premade bags and then having to run that bag through a bag sealer that could be either a foot pedal operated bag sealer or a Rotary bag sealer. That’s a perfect application to automate using a wrapper.
How does the wrapper replace the manual bagging operation?
The thing to remember is automatic wrappers will run polyethylene films or they’ll run polyolefin films. The wrapper can create and seal a bag around the product, eliminating the need for the premade bags as well as the labor associated with opening the bag, stuffing product into the bag and finally sealing the bag. By using the wrapper, even hand loading the infeed conveyor, the customer can save a lot of labor and materials costs.
Is bagging for eCommerce a common application for wrappers?
Any Texwrap sealer can be used in any application where product is wrapped a polyethylene or polyolefin bag. Sometimes the bag is shrunk to the product, but it often is not. The customer can move away from pre-made bags to purchasing rolls of film representing material cost savings in addition to the labor savings
Is there any limitation to the bagging application?
If you can lay the product on a conveyor and it can transfer from a conveyor to conveyor, we can automatically seal polyethylene bag around it to automate the whole process. The other limitation is the size of the product since it needs to fit within the specifications of the machine. That being said, we have automated a wide variety of products including magazines, mop heads, and air filters.
Are there any other applications that use this bagging concept?
With the growth of e-Commerce, many customers find they need to place product ordered into opaque films to ship individual units to end customers. The opaque film conceals the shipped product but often just needs to be “right-sized” to the product. The automated wrappers can create these film bags as well to help reduce the overall labor associated with their e-Commerce shipping.
Conclusion
Automatic wrappers create polyethylene or polyolefin film bags around products feed to it on an inbound conveyor. By automating the operation with a wrapper, customers can reduce labor and run up to 3 times faster than their manual operations. Whether bagging for eCommerce shipping or just to contain products, Texwrap has your solution.
Learn more about eCommerce solutions machines for wrap-to-stock and wrap-to-ship applications.
Al Kiggans is a packaging industry veteran with 40 years of experience. Here he shares his insights on when a compnay should look at automating its bagging and shrink operations.