Market demand is driving innovation in the packaging space which is leading to changes in how meat is being packaged for the consumer, Food & Beverage Industry News reports.

When it comes to packaging, the manufacturing space is a competitive one and every company within the sector is continually working on new innovations.

Lumix Procut, experts in food processing solutions, are partnered with Italian packaging solutions company, ILPRA, to offer packaging innovations to SME clients.

“A lot of our competitors tailor to the larger clients in the market whereas we also have the equipment to work with SMEs,” said Nathan Grange, partner, and director at Lumix Procut.

“ILPRA are one of the original tray sealing companies, so they have a depth of knowledge around the industry.

“Companies have been using tray sealers for over 40 years for food packaging and lot of that is for retail packaging, and the reasons for that are it extends shelf life of the product, and presents well on a retail shelf, and product is portioned out for shopping convenience.”

Along with technological innovations of tray sealing machines over the years, market demand around less packaging going to landfill is driving changes in what materials are being used, which is creating a demand for flexible tray sealers.

“The market has had to shift what type of materials they use for the tray sealing process,” said Grange.

“We deal with different supply chains and those chains do innovations around more sustain-able packaging; one company has produced a tray that is 80 to 90 per cent card-board. Reducing single use plastic by 80 to 90 per cent and still allowing for product freshness and MAP stability.

“There are other companies producing the film, which is red-cycle, the soft plastic you can peel off the packaging, and put aside and hand back to the supermarket stores, again, reducing single use plastics.”

Lumix Procut can offer a package with the tray sealer, combined with the new cardboard trays and film, which in turn will create a more environmentally friendly process.

“A lot of other macro factors also come into play, things like global politics, consumer-based factors, all these things have an impact on the market,” said Grange.

“We have known about the cardboard solution for four to five years, but the momentum is building up more, like it is with MVs.” Grange said the flexibility of ILPRA’s range was one of its biggest advantages.

“For a consumer to go with us, the positives for ILPRA are flexibility. ILPRA start from the smaller end of the spectrum, through to high output,” he added.

“We can deal with clients from the lower economy of scale to, including those who are starting up and have a higher running cost.”

The ILPRA tray sealer can accept all currently used packaging materials, such as plastic trays, but they are also capable of working with the newest innovations in cardboard packaging.

“We can do everything from a standard seal to skin packing and extra skin packing,” said Grange.

“Skin packing is when the film forms around the product on the tray. You go to the larger retail chains now and you can see the shift from single use plastics to more sustainable packaging. From MAP in bulk trays to single portion cuts and high end cuts on expansion cardboard trays.

“Where have developed further now is if you go to the premium style meat cuts that are individually portioned into trays, what you’ll see is the film has been vacuum sealed around the product itself.”

Grange said convenience was a big factor, along with changes in packaging materials used in tray sealers.

He added that the big supermarkets, and boutique ones such as Harris Farms, taking up products packaged in this way was only a benefit to the wider market.

“So long as the largest start the process, everyone else can follow because they act as trend setters because they can get out to more people,” he said.

“We align more closely with the SMEs and boutique clients because we start from the smaller semi-automatic machines, through to the large inline models.”