Bopack Systems nv, located in Wommelgem, Belgium, and a trend-setting company in the area of product identification, introduced in the middle of June a totally new product range: the shrink-wrap sleeve applicator. It is a machine that covers a blank product, mainly from the food, drinks or cosmetics sector, entirely in a pre-printed sleeve made from very thin plastic. Dry steam or warm air heats the sleeve until it shrinks and automatically attaches itself to the entire surface of the product.

Bopack Systems has brought the technology and basic machines over from Taiwan. The machines are adapted to meet the customer’s needs using Bopack System’s own know-how and engineering.

Business Development Manager Timothy Boehlen explains the advantages:

“The advantages are numerous. Due to the fact that legislation is constantly being extended, more and more legal information has to be added to the packaging. The ordinary label, that originally was only a commercial eye catcher, has become too small for this. With sleeves we can use the entire surface of a product, all the way round and from top to bottom, for commercial and legal information as well as visuals. This means better presentation on the shelf. Studies show that the customer recognises colour from 10 metres away, shapes from 4 metres away and the brand from 1 metre away. Of the products he takes off the shelf ‘to look at’, he takes more than 70% to the cash desk. The sleeve makes the most of this. Because the plastic sleeve is shrunk round the product, no matter how strange the shape, no glue is used and it can be removed with one tug and recycled. In mono packaging PET bottles are also given a PET sleeve. For the manufacturers this means a considerable saving is made on labels, backing paper and sometimes even on packaging and stock management. Because the pre-printed sleeves cover the entire product, different products can be sold in the same basic container, using the sleeve to differentiate between them.”

Experience and Know-How From Taiwan

With this new range of machines Bopack Systems nv is aiming at the manufacturers of food products, drinks in bottles, cosmetics and pharmaceuticals. In addition to the extra-fast machines that can sleeve up to 48,000 items an hour, the range also includes applicators for smaller production runs of 15,000 or even only 3,000 items an hour.

Considerable preparation and market research preceded this step. “It quickly became obvious that, because of our years of experience and high-tech know-how, we would buy our machines from Taiwan,” says Timothy Boehlen. ”But we are not box movers for these machines. We distinguish ourselves from others – as Bopack Systems has always done for other products – by using the imported machines as a starting point to which we make changes until we have a solution for the customer’s specific needs.”