Folded hand-towels, napkins, giant BRT and HRT rolls are the big players of the Away-From-Home tissue business, a market segment that covers more than 25% of tissue paper's total consumption.
This category of products consolidated in North America many years ago, is now increasing in Europe too. Fast food chains, restaurants, hotels and public places constitute the channels of distribution of these products. The AFH market is a business tied to a life style typical of North America that covers 34% of the total American tissue consumption, two times more than in Europe.
Maurizio Baraglia e Tom Bentzler
This is the market where Green Bay Engineering was born and developed production machinery for inter-folding, growing not only in the local market but exporting its experience all over the world. For over 25 years Green Bay Engineering has become known for designing and manufacturing customized solutions for the challenges of the folded hygienic product converting industry. In the course of completing their efforts, Green Bay Engineering has developed over 35 diverse machines, and worked with over 100 companies worldwide. Today, as part of the Fabio Perini S.p.A. and Körber family of companies (See PJL n. 19), Green Bay Engineering continues the tradition of viewing challenges from a fresh perspective and creating innovative solutions to converting and packaging industries' needs. While many of the creations that Green Bay Engineering has developed over the years have solved problems that were for a specific client's unique needs, a number of the machines have repeatedly provided converters around the world with reliable, efficient means to convert or package their finished products.
One of Green Bay Engineering's greatest contributions to the industry has been paper banders for folded products as Single-fold, Multi-fold or C-fold towel or one of the many folded napkin products manufactured globally. The Green Bay Engineering Model 120 and Model 90 Banders are machines designed to wrap a product of compressible folded towel or napkin with a paper band. Selecting which one will best fit converting line depends on the finished product characteristics, operating speed requirements, and overall application.
The Model 120 bander creates a continuous paper band around either individual packs or complete logs or reams of folded product. The sleeve is formed from two reels of wrapping material, which are formed, individually cut and then glued together around the product. It is capable of speed up to 20 mpm (65 fpm) - for full logs - or 60 PPM on individual packs.
Due to the performance and the ability to automatically adjust to accommodate different product lengths without operator intervention, the 120 bander can be used to accept the production output conveyed from multiple folder lines. The Model 90 Bander is a single seam bander that wraps individual packs of folded products including C-Fold, Multi-fold, Single-fold or Napkin products at speed up to 60 PPM. The Model 90 features a four-station turret design that inserts individual packs of product into pre-formed paper sleeves. The pre-formed sleeves are glued to the specific pack dimensions required. Each individual pack is then inserted into the pre-formed sleeves that have been expanded on two (top and bottom) plates. The potential fourth station allows the addition of an optional pack cartoner if either banded or cartoned packaging is requested. Customized infeed systems consisting of flat belts, pusher belts, or bucket conveyor can be designed for a wide variety of folded products.
EXISTING LINES OPTIMIZATION: THE AUTOMATION
Providing innovative solutions to expand technology's limits is the GBE philosophy. The completion of a revolutionary new automation process for existing manual multi-fold and single-fold towel lines represents the proof. Inter-folded towel lines with manual count and transfer have several limitations: labour intensive, limited operating speeds, inconsistent finished product quality, low operating efficiencies.
Green Bay Engineering's interruption and separation processes provide a means to overcome all of these issues, improving folded towel line productivity and reducing the converting costs. Interruption and separation are the keys to the process. The existing folder is modified to create a "discontinuity" in the lapping process causing sheets to no longer be interlocked. Thanks to this concept, it is possible to preset the exact sheet count on the control panel. The reams are guided into a belt separator and divided into individual logs. The logs are then conveyed into a Model 120 Bander and finally loaded into a log saw to be cut into finished product.
CASE STUDY
A recent Green Bay Engineering folder automation completed in late 2002 involved improving the performance of two 20-year-old existing manual multi-fold towel lines. Green Bay Engineering proposed their new interruption and separation system and tied both folding lines into one Model 120 bander then into an accumulator and finally into one Fabio Perini 120G log saw.
As a result of the automation, this converter obtained several improvements, including:
- Increased total throughput and operating speed of both folders by 20%.
- Improved product quality
-100% sheet count
- Reduced operating cost