“Although we still continue to package our spices by hand,” Seegobin explains, “we purchased the WeighPack Xpdius specifically for the sole purpose to help us garner a larger audience for our Crunchy Pea Sticks.
“Our problem was with packaging,” he expands, saying that prior to automating the packaging line, Maywah was wary of seeking out bigger grocery stores as new customers for fear of not being able to meet production deadlines.
“Because they were packaged by hand, not only did our packaging for the Crunchy Pea Sticks not look as professional as it does now, but we were simply unable to hand-pack quickly enough to meet the demand we would expect from larger would-be customers,” Seegobin recalls. “We weren’t exactly suffering, but there was no growth.”
Photo by Sandra Strangemore
All that changed virtually overnight since the arrival of WeighPack’s state-of-the-art machinery.
“Because of the throughput speed of the Xpdius machine,” he relates, “we have been able to package the pea-sticks much quicker, which has allowed us to concentrate on growing our customer base.
“To use an example,” Seegobin enthuses, “we recently began supplying Highland Farms, no less, with the Crunchy Pea Sticks we make here.”
The Xpdius Elite series of vertical form/fill/seal baggers—which includes the Elite 800 model purchased by Maywah—is engineered specifically for high-speed, high-performance applications, according to WeighPack, which has steadily leveraged its machine-building prowess in recent years to become a highly-respected presence in global packaging machinery markets, today operating international branches in Las Vegas, Chicago, Miami and Shanghai, China.
Equipped with powerful value-added features such as servo-drive pull belts and sealing jaws, floating film and unwind assembly, a color touchscreen HMI (human machine interface), a posi-brake mechanism and an articulating control panel, the Xpdius Elite machines
are capable of forming and sealing up to 120 bags per minute—at widths up to 20 centimeters (eight inches)—using both laminated or polyethylene films.
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