Order of the tray
Facing a squeeze from rising input costs on the one side and down-trading consumers on the other, the competitive ready meals sector is also under pressure to constantly innovate and rotate recipes, placing greater demands for flexibility on packaging and filling lines.
Environmentally friendly concerns are still at the forefront of packaging solutions but must be paired with tangible cost savings and can no longer command any significant premium for cost-conscious manufacturers. Integrated packaging systems are, meanwhile, increasingly viewed as offering environmental and economic benefits alongside enhanced efficiency.
Adding functionality
One of the main challenges in ready meal packaging is "adding value to the pack itself within acceptable economics", says Fabrice Roy, executive director of strategic marketing at Sealed Air Food and Beverage.
This might include a pack with good reheating properties but a cool-to-the-touch effect or skin packaging reducing pasteurisation time and thus generating energy savings.
"If you take, for example, partially cooked chicken and rice," says Roy. "You can finish the cooking during the pasteurisation process, enhancing shelf-life, which doesn't add value for consumers but enables you to streamline the manufacturing process. You don't have to change lines to do all parts of the recipe in the same day; it eliminates the burden linked to changeover of recipes."
Sealed Air Cryovac's latest innovations include foam trays offering a 30% weight reduction over standard trays and none of the sharp edges associated with rigid alternatives. The firm's ovenable foam tray is used by Sodebo, the French market leader in chilled pizza, to keep its pizza slices crunchy and crispy.
Sealed Air is a partner with Multivac in supplying the new Simple Steps tray packaging solution for vacuum skin tray systems, which is microwavable and can be used for chilled and frozen ready-to-cook or reheat meals. "There are no water crystals, reduced pasteurisation time and it doesn't need piercing," says Roy.
Also supplied by Multivac is a high pressure processing and packaging solution offering the same shelf-life without preservatives or, retaining preservatives, a doubling or tripling of shelf-life. "It is ideal for recipes with reduced nitrite or nitrate, for example," says Matthew Jackson, general sales manager at Multivac.
Multivac reports a growing trend towards thermoforming, which offers flexible, lightweight packaging and longer shelf-life. Its Flavour-Lock Pouch using flexible film is used for the Findus Fresher Tastes range, and is ovenable or microwavable straight from the freezer. The thermoformed flexible ready meal packs use Dupont's Ovenable Mylar (polyethylene terephthalate PET) film.
"We are working with poultry producers with this material for ovenable chicken packs to avoid the contamination risk of campylobacter bacteria that affects the majority of poultry," says Andrew Stark, marketing manager at Multivac.
Skinfoil trays, meanwhile, have the benefits of a foil pack: "they can be grilled as well as baked", says Stark, "combined with the shelf-life advantages of a vacuum skin pack".
Security is a further functional attribute sought by many firms, with a tamper- evident tab one of the key features of RPC Blackburn's Thor Pot used by Glorious! for its single-serving microwavable stews. Injection moulded in polypropylene, the Thor Pot also features a wide opening and snug-fitting, re-sealable lid to retain freshness.
"Trends that we have observed in ready meal packaging include an increased use of polypropylene materials for pots and trays which is being driven by the retailers' requirements to have greater visibility of products in their packaging," says Neil Ashton, sales manager at Packaging Automation. "Polypropylene offers very good clarity something that can't be achieved with dual ovenable CPET [crystalline PET]."
Environmental benefits
Sustainability has not fallen by the wayside as cost concerns take centre stage due to the unavoidable link between environmentally friendly principles and other drivers such as wastage reduction and general efficiencies.
"Shelf-life of products is a major focus for everyone right through the supply chain because waste, transport and refrigeration costs need to be reduced as much as possible," says Terry Starkey, marketing consultant at Marel.
"Retailers are always seeking to reduce waste, so processors respond to this demand with more innovation in pack design, such as different types and thinner gauges of film. There is also a trend towards reducing the sheer amount and cost of packaging with, for example, reduced sleeve sizes and lower cost materials."
For Roy at Sealed Air, sustainability has become generic; ready meal firms are looking at their lifecycle analysis and what reductions can be made in packaging such as printing labelling on lidding film instead of cardboard sleeves. "Everyone agrees they will get green packaging provided it's not more expensive," he says. "If it's 30% more expensive, people will not buy it."
Proseal, meanwhile, is predicting cardboard has a future as a more sustainable alternative to aluminium and plastic in ready meal packaging. The heat sealing specialist has been working with Rapid Action Packaging on a hermetically sealed sandwich box using lined cardboard coating to bridge gaps between folds and seals, and is in discussions with a UK manufacturer about transferring the technology to ready meals.
It also recently introduced EcoSeal: a high- speed tray sealing system claiming to improve efficiency and reduce air consumption for cost and environmental benefits. According to the firm, EcoSeal's patented technology means that seal force can be increased by as much as 190% over conventional sealing machines while consuming only 30% of the air usually required.
At the recent Foodex exhibition, Packaging Automation launched a new 'Eclipse range'; said to be the first fully electric range of tray sealing machines with the potential to reduce power consumption by up to 90%.
Flexible solutions
While functionality and sustainability are driving the market for ready meal packaging, flexibility and versatility are underpinning it, with firms seeking quick, easy and low-cost changing of product lines to meet evolving market demands.
"Given the uncertainty in the food retailing market across the board, any investment they make needs to be future proofed," says Ashton.
Torsten Giese, marketing manager at Ishida Europe concurs: "The continual introduction of new products can lead to shorter production runs. In addition, manufacturers often have to react quickly to changes in customer orders or requirements, and this has led to the development of machines with fast changeovers, and which can run two different products simultaneously."
With enhanced flexibility and quick and easy changeovers in mind, Ishida has updated its best-selling tray sealer. Compatible with standard modified atmosphere packs (MAP), skinpack and shrink-film applications for ready meals, the QX-775-Flex is said to be compact and hygienic in design, while offering high-quality pack and product presentation and speeds of up to 15 cycles a minute for MAP trays.
Operators can change films and tools using automatic and quick-release features, adapting to the fluctuating product range and production volumes associated with ready meal applications.
Flexibility is also a feature of Marel's multihead weigher. It operates infeed, sorting, mixing and accurate weighing of protein and sticky products including split or mix portions for packing into most container types. Offering exact portions and reduced giveaway, it can be divided for use with two or three products or with two lines.
Marel, a strategic partner with Ulma and Sealed Air, also supplies a Speedbatcher, which creates batches at high speed, automatically weighing raw material into sub-weights then combined into the optimum batch weight.
According to Giese at Ishida, ready meal manufacturers are looking for 'overall equipment efficiency'; minimising downtime while maximising throughput and quality. "An integrated system can ensure all this from tray denesting, weighing and filling of products, to sealing, labelling, label and seal inspection, and X-ray inspection and checkweighing," says Giese. "A fully efficient system offers important environmental benefits by reducing energy consumption and food and material waste."
Tony Burgess, control systems manager at Proseal, agrees: "The ability to develop fully integrated packing lines that can be tailored to the precise needs of individual products is also a growing requirement."
Cost concerns may be paramount, but ready meal processors that fail to invest in functional, sustainable packaging solutions with flexible applications may pay more in the long run.
