watttron

R.A Jones Pouch King gets Sustainable Upgrade, thanks to partnership with watttron

As major environmental regulations begin to take effect around the world and consumer demand increases for sustainable packaging, manufacturers are under more pressure than ever to find eco-friendly solutions. 

Flexible pouching products in particular are in need of sustainable materials, as their traditional packaging is unable to be recycled. However, many recyclable pouching materials are too heat-sensitive to withstand high-speed productions, so manufacturers face challenges with the sacrificed production time and disrupted schedules involved with testing new materials on their own machinery.

Manufacturers have been searching for R&D Innovation that adapts to solve these problems, so R.A Jones has been on the forefront of sustainability innovation. Connecting R.A Jones’ proven experience to customer challenges, our experts have been engineering new ways to produce environmentally-friendly flexible packaging using our popular ultra-high speed horizontal form-fill-seal machine, the Pouch King. 

We partnered with watttron, a German engineering company with a focus on digital heating systems, which allows for precise and efficient heat application. After years of collaboration, we have created new heat sealing and tension control technologies for the Pouch King, so it is now able to run sustainable materials—and still at ultra-high speeds up to 2000 pouches per minute. This highly engineered solution can be installed on new Pouch Kings or as modernization kits on current machines in the field.

"We, at watttron, are thrilled to cooperate with R.A. Jones. Their machines are renowned for exceptional speed and productivity, setting industry standards in packaging solutions. By integrating our cutting-edge heating technology with R.A. Jones’ innovative machinery, we aim to enhance performance and efficiency even further. We are excited to support and contribute to this amazing technology, and we look forward to a successful and transformative collaboration in the future" says watttron‘s CEO Marcus Stein.

While eco-friendly materials continue to evolve, the most important part of achieving sustainability is having the ability to test these materials and validate the heat-sealing technologies required. The R.A Jones pouch lab is capable of doing exactly this. 

Our lab includes a full-size production machine capable of testing sealing material at ultra-high speeds. It also includes a stationary bench test equipped for preliminary material testing and ASTM standard peel testing to validate material seal strength when new technologies are applied. With proven solutions from years of testing experience on customer and supplier films, our pouch lab is now open and available for testing to validate these technologies.

R.A Jones has already tested many customer and supplier materials on our in-house equipment in Covington, KY. Businesses are interested in the sustainable upgrades for good reason. The EU has established demanding sustainability goals to be implemented by 2030, and some countries are enacting penalties for non-recyclable materials. Even in countries or regions without this type of legislation, consumer demand is pointing increasingly in the same direction. According to a 2023 report by PDI Technologies, 68% of people were willing to pay more for environmentally friendly products—which is up from 64% in 2021 (1). As manufacturing needs continue to change and evolve, R.A Jones will continue to be the future-proof solution.


(1) pditechnologies.com (2023). https://pditechnologies.com/news/consumers-willing-pay-more-sustainability/
 
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