Fresh salads are one of the most shelf-life sensitive products in the fresh food category. From harvesting to packaging, every stage must protect the product’s integrity to ensure freshness and shelf life. The packaging process plays a key role in this process, and BagForm has been working closely with one of the UK’s largest salad manufacturers to support them in improving product freshness in the packaging process.
The Challenge with Packaging Salads
The customer operates multiple high-output VFFS lines, producing a wide variety of salads every day. Their packaging requirements are complex as they need to run lightweight, flexible films that provide consistent bag presentation and tight seal integrity, all while running at high speeds to meet industry demand.
But beyond efficiency, freshness is crucial. To maintain quality from factory to shelf, the customer relies on a modified atmosphere packaging (MAP) process, a combination of gas flushing and vacuum to reduce oxygen levels inside the bag. This process directly affects shelf life and, in turn, product freshness, which impacts customer satisfaction and wastage for retailers.
The customer asked us to design and manufacture a series of custom VFFS forming sets, engineered to match the salad producer’s exact machine specifications and final product requirements. When designing a forming set, the details matter, from the tube profile to the material finish. All need to be optimised to ensure smooth film handling, crease-free, strong seals and asset durability.
Our forming sets are built to last, reducing downtime and maintaining consistent packaging quality across production runs. For a high-throughput environment, this level of precision makes a real difference.
Our gas and vacuum VFFS solution
With the customer, we’ve initiated trials on an enhanced gas and vacuum system integrated into the forming set. The goal is to:
Improve the vacuum cycle to extract air more effectively
Optimise gas flush delivery to reduce residual oxygen levels
Maintain high packing speeds without introducing complexity
If successful, these enhancements will extend product shelf life and keep salads fresher for longer, a tangible gain for both retailer and consumer.
At Bagform, we have decades of experience working with both VFFS machine OEMs and end users, giving us the capability to design bespoke forming sets or upgrade existing bag formers for any application. This means whether it’s an entirely new line or a retrofit to improve performance, we can engineer a solution that fits seamlessly into your operation.
As proud members of Made in Britain, we design and manufacture every forming set right here in the UK, ensuring full quality control from start to finish by industry experts.
Collaboration in Action
This project is a perfect example of how we work with our customers, by listening to their needs and understanding the technical challenges of packing products with the VFFS method, we’ve been able to deliver a solution that works today, whilst developing improvements for tomorrow.
Follow the link below to get in touch with our team and find out how we can help with your next VFFS project.
Find out more about Alway Loughborough on their member profile page here
Member-created content 3 days ago | From members