Quality Assurance on Flow Packaging Machines (VFFS/HFFS)

On both horizontal and vertical MAP enabled flow packaging machines, measurement of the gas composition is essential for ensuring a long shelf life of the product. At the same time the nature of flow packaging machines is that the packages are flushed with a high gas volume to ensure the correct gas compostion, typically the amount of gas is between 2-4 times the volume of the package.

Using an on-line gas analyser with built-in flow control for quality assurance on flow wrappers gives the following benefits:

• Improved quality - the packaging process is stopped immediately if the gas content in the modified atmosphere package is not correct.
• Reduced gas consumption - an on-line regulation of the gas content typically saves up to 25% of gas
• Saved operator time for manual quality control, e.g. manual headspace analysis