Once Upon a Farm's spouted pouches of organic, dairy-free smoothies make for easy, resealable, on-the-go snacking.
Since 2018, Once Upon a Farm has nearly doubled the number of outlets that sell its stand-up pouches of nutritious baby food and snacks for children. Looking ahead to satisfy future demand, the company in February of 2024 installed automated SOMIC Packaging 424 W3 wraparound case packing systems at two of the contract manufacturers/packagers it works with, one in Milwaukee and one in Orange County, Calif.
“We heard about Somic and the 424 machine at PACK EXPO, and I had prior interaction with Stacy Schmeiser, their west coast regional sales manager,” says Douglas Blake, director of co-packer engineering at Once Upon a Farm.
“We were impressed by the machine’s capabilities and knew there was an opportunity to streamline our production process,” adds Blake. “We considered two other companies, but Somic was the clear winner because of its accuracy, capabilities with different case sizes, and overall customer service. Stacy’s persistence and tactful style of communication is a large reason why Somic earned our business. He was patient, strategic, straightforward, and knew Somic would deliver what we needed.”
It's important to point out that Once Upon a Farm’s pouches are processed with High Pressure Processing (HPP). This makes the combination of speed and efficiency all the more important where case packing is concerned. “Our product has a short refrigerated shelf life of four months,” says Blake. “Getting everything through the system quickly and safely is extremely important.”
Also a key factor was Somic's ability to run the paperboard, as opposed to corrugated, cases that Once Upon a Farm wanted. “Their team was more than willing to work with us to create what we needed,” says Blake. “They also had prior experience with paperboard in the size and similar thickness that we were looking to implement. This gave us the confidence they would be able to execute the project successfully. The board itself, a 29-pt coated unbleached kraft, was critical to getting the cost reductions we needed to make the project viable. Case type, design and size, and labor reduction all played a part in the decision-making process.”
Upstream operators feed the casepacker from totes filled with pouches that have gone through HPP.
APC in Milwaukee
American Pasteurization Co. (APC) in Milwaukee is one of the Once Upon a Farm co-packers that runs a 424 W3 machine. Greg Zaja, APC’s vice president of business development, said they first heard of Somic through contacts in the food industry.
“The decision to invest in the machinery was ultimately made by Once Upon a Farm, and the functionality of the machine itself was key,” says Zaja, a 20-year veteran at APC. “Somic’s specifications were a good match for the production needs, and the responses from companies already using their equipment were all positive.” He notes that not only does the new case packer allow for greater hourly throughput, it also greatly reduces the risk of human error. “The older case packing equipment required a few extra sets of hands on the assembly line,” says Zaja. “Not to mention that the older machine just wasn’t intended to handle the volume level we currently do.”
Compression tooling closes the case and it’s ready for discharge.
The bottom-gusseted spouted pouches arriving at the Somic case packer are either 3.2- or 4-oz sizes. All are filled upstream on equipment from Gualapack. The newest of these is the Model CHP 2H, a two-head rotary system with a rated speed of 85 pouches/min. For both filling heads, the sequence of operations is as follows. Pouches arrive on 50-count rails. An operator loads rails into a feed system that brings the rails to a pusher that pushes those 50 pouches into a loading station. The loading station feeds two pouches at a time into a rotary table with notches into which the spouts of the pouches fit. With pouches suspended from these notches, the rotary table rotates to a filling station for a volumetric fill. The table then rotates to a capping station, a cleaning station, and then a cap tightening station. Also along the way is a laser coder from Keyence that puts a date code on the back of each pouch near the bottom of the pouch. Pouches then drop onto a discharge conveyor, run through a metal detector, and drop eventually into a tote holding around 4,000 pouches.
“We’ve found the Gualapack machines to be as good as it gets,” says Blake. “A lot of your pouching machines don't do so well with cold fills. A lot of them like the liquid being filled to be warm and easy to run. Gualapack uses a volumetric servo-driven piston for their fillers, which gives you so much control over the actual drawback speeds and the push speeds even on cold products, which leads to really precise fills. We run the product at about 38 degrees F, and we can get within like a three-gram tolerance on fill weights.”
Before HPP and case packing is phase one, where spouted pouches mounted on rails are fed into a two-head rotary filler.
On to HPP
Now it’s on to the second phase, High Pressure Processing (HPP). APC has five HPP systems in operation, the newest of which is a Model 525L from Avure. Each of the HPP systems operates in batch mode, including the Model 525L. Operators load a large carrier with hundreds of pouches and send that carrier into the Avure system’s high-pressure water-filled chamber. The chamber is tightly sealed and pressurized to as much as 87,000 PSI and held for about three minutes. This non-thermal method, which kills microorganisms in food without damaging taste or nutritional value the way more traditional thermal processes do, is a way to extend refrigerated shelf life without any need for chemicals or preservatives. The Once Upon a Farm pouches have a refrigerated shelf life of four months.
At this point the pouches go back into large totes that are wheeled to phase three, which is case packing. Operators dump the pouches onto tables and then place them single file in the proper spout-trailing orientation on a belt conveyor leading into the Somic system, which is driven by servo technology provided by Schneider Electric. A total of 23 servo motors are used in this particular machine.
This carrier filled with pouches has just exited one of the Avure HPP systems operating at APC.
As pouches are conveyed into the Somic machine, they need to be spaced out properly. This is accomplished in a station where a phasing belt from below and a conditioning belt from above ensure spacing and uniformity of each pouch. At that point the pouches enter the individual flights of a “lamella chain.” Once eight pouches are standing upright in the flights of the lamella chain, all eight are pushed into a forming cassette that forms a case—picked as a flat blank from a magazine feed--around the pouches. With an assist from a Nordson adhesive dispensing system and the Somic compression tooling, the case is closed and ready for discharge. Shortly after discharge from the Somic machine, a Videojet 8520 ink jet system puts product identification information and a date code on each case. All that’s left is palletizing, which at this stage is done manually.
The other currently manual task that Blake would like to automate is the process of feeding individual pouches into the Somic case packer. “I just haven’t hammered out a good way of doing that yet,” he says. In the meantime, he’s plenty happy about progress made in case packing.
“In that plant we were using about 12 people to pack nine or ten cases per minute,” he points out. “Now we’re down to about four people and we do 13 to 15 cases per minute with that single-lane setup. We’re now working with Somic on a two-lane setup that will get us up to around 20 cases per minute. It will also provide a little accumulation buffer so the operators aren’t working quite so much on an on-demand basis.”
“Speed and downtime are always key considerations,” says Zaja. “Production efficiency, reducing delays—these issues are always at the forefront. The machine’s reliability and prompt service from Somic when there is an issue has minimized downtime, allowing us to maintain a consistent production schedule. Keeping costs in check helps us offer our customers the most competitive pricing in the industry. Reducing the risk of delays or cost overruns helps our customers meet all their objectives, which is our number one priority.”
Recycle-ready pouch
Also making news at Once Upon a Farm is the premade spouted pouch. Supplied by Cheer Pack, it’s the CHEERCircle PE spouted pouch, which, because of its composition, is recycle-ready—i.e., designed to be recycled when the necessary infrastructure is available. Cheer Pack makes it in its West Bridgewater, Mass., facility from Amcor’s AmPrima Plus rollstock, a PE film that is designed to meet the APR Design Guide for recyclability. The multilayer structure consists of a proprietary Machine Direction-Oriented PE (MDO PE) film that is reverse printed on a gravure press and laminated to a coextruded PE sealant that contains EVOH for oxygen barrier. MDO PE film is stretched in the direction of the machine that produces it, which improves the film’s properties by making it more rigid, durable, and resistant to moisture. According to Amcor, the AmPrima rollstock in this application provides an OTR of 0.6cc/100 in. sq/day (0.93 cc/m2/day) and an MVTR of 0.08 g/100 sq in/day (1.3 gr/m2/day). The oxygen transmission rate testing was done at elevated humidity inside the package (90% RH) and ambient conditions outside the package (73F/50% RH) to better understand the barrier properties of the film in a real-world product environment.
Notably, the AmPrima material provides the necessary heat resistance to allow for spout insertion. In this case, the injection-molded one-part spout is
Cheer Pack’s CHEERClassic 8.6-mm spout, which Cheer Pack affixes to pouches by way of a proprietary thermal sealing process.
Also notable is that the new pouch includes Cheer Pack’s Vizi caps, which APC applies to filled pouches after filling through the spout. Injection molded of HDPE, the one-piece cap is said to deliver not only a better grip but also improved visibility of tamper evidence. Plus, compared to the cap and spout used formerly, the new cap and spout bring a 30% reduction in plastic. According to Cheer Pack, for every 10 million CHEERClassic spouted pouches and Vizi caps, Once Upon a Farm will remove 19 tons of plastic waste from landfills.
“Partnering with Cheer Pack N.A. to introduce the CHEERCircle all-PE spouted pouch and Vizi cap is a major milestone in our journey to reduce our environmental impact,” says Larry Waldman, president and COO of Once Upon a Farm. “While our commitment to continuous improvement does not end here, we are proud to leverage all improvement strategies available today.” PW
