With Sonoco Alloyd's mono-material PaperBlister® package, thermoformed plastic is completely removed from the packaging equation, yet packages may continue to be fed, formed, and sealed using existing Alloyd package sealing equipment after a simple retrofit performed by a machine technician. Once retrofitted, the machine can go back and forth to producing traditional plastic blister packaging with a simple, factory operator assisted tooling changeover, which usually takes around 30 minutes.
An example of this is with the Pentel R.S.V.P.® line of writing pens and their recent switch from traditional plastic-to-card, face seal packaging to the updated card-to-card, PaperBlister packaging. Using existing Alloyd Aergo 8 sealing equipment, they were able to avoid costly new equipment purchases for this new, sustainable style of packaging. The retrofit consisted of one dedicated Alloyd equipment technician to visit their facility and install the PaperBlister retrofit kit; this process cost less than $6,000 and around 4 hours to complete.
Once adjusted, the retrofitted Aergo 8 sealing machine seals 20% faster due to the nature of sealing like-materials together. Efficiencies are further improved with shorter make-ready times on the Aergo line of equipment when sealing PaperBlister package designs. Using a series of vacuum arms and engineered design configurations, the flat card is formed into a cavity of the Aergo 8 and automatically advances the rotary style turntable for product loading by either a robot or machine operator/loader. The turntable then moves on to the automatic card loading station where an internal vacuum-assisted arm picks a blister card from the chute and places it atop the formed cavity with product loaded. The next position is the heat-seal station where the package is automatically sealed using a customized contoured heat platen, sealing the perimeter flange of the formed PaperBlister cavity to the front blister card at a preset temperature, time, and pressure. At the final station, the package is ejected using a flip-over eject onto a conveyor, receptacle box, or packing operator handoff. This equipment can go back to traditional plastic thermoformed blister packaging with a simple tooling changeover, much like changing over tooling for any other SKU changeout. This equipment automatically feeds, seals, and ejects sealed paper packages, making it a fully versatile, automatic machine for multiple package style configurations. Cost savings of not needing to acquire additional equipment to seal a new line of packaged products is in the 100's of thousands of dollars. Furthermore, by retrofitting existing equipment, this saves decommissioned machinery from being sent to the landfills.
Most existing Alloyd Aergo line of sealing equipment purchased in the past several years is capable of being retrofitted to seal PaperBlister designs (older equipment would need to be evaluated for the ability to retrofit). New Aergo sealing machines purchased today come pre-equipped to seal PaperBlister and traditional plastic blisters at no extra cost.