“Purchasing the Tetra Pak line was a considerable investment,” Jamie Gott acknowledges, “but we really wanted to be the first to produce spring water in cartons in North America.
“And it’s not just about our customers, like Walmart and Loblaws, looking for us to help them be more environmentally-friendly: We know that the demand for these items are consumer-driven, which is where it really matters.”
Photo by Sandra Strangemore
Installed during the spring of 2008, the Tetra Pak aseptic packaging line at Ice River consits of a model A3Flex filler, 30Flex Tetra Cap applicator, Tetra Cardboard Packer 70, Tetra Film Wrapper 68 and a Tetra Helix accumulator conveying system, which utilizes robust PLMS (product life-cycle management system) software to track and optimize production output, minimize scrap and rejects, and monitor the product run-times.
The aseptic line uses 500-ml Tetra Prisma Aseptic boxes—made up of 75-percent paper, 20-percent PET (polyethylene terephthalate) and five-percent foil to package the spring water—providing a premium-grade carton package with a unique, eye-catching shape and excellent pouring and gripping features.
Requiring just one person to operate, the line’s A3Flex filler uses a deep-bath sterilization system that is well above the Canadian legal safety requirements, according to Tetra Pak.
“The Tetra Prisma Aseptic packaging comes to us on a reel of 8,900 packs, and it is fed directly onto the filler with a reel truck,” explains Sandy Gott. “The packaging then travels trough the filler at its top speed of 116-ppm (packages per minute) and goes through a hydrogen-peroxide bath to sterilize the packaging material, before being formed into a tube where it gets filled with ozonated water.
“A small amount of food-grade nitrogen is then introduced into the package to improve rigidity, the package is sealed, and sent down the
line through a final folder,” she continues. “At this point, the Tetra Pak package is aseptically sealed.”
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