Episode 10 – Video Transcript

On  this episode of “On The Pulse of Packaging” we are discussing some great advice on Flow wrappers for new end user customers and what distributors should know about PAC Machinery in this product line featuring our Vice President, Greg Berguig.

Q- So for one, what questions do customers ask who are interested in flow wrappers? What do they ask us?

So that’s a great question Shannon. I mean they ask us a lot about the capabilities of the machine obviously. You know there’s a couple things to know like how fast can it run? How do I load the product in there? What does changeover look like? You know typically a lot of customers we work with have multiple products that they’re trying to wrap. They’re trying to go from a pre-made bag and a band seal or a bar sealer to something higher speed. We see it a lot with startups in the food business where I imagine you had some awesome energy bar or some chocolate or something like that where you’re doing it by hand. Maybe you got a contract with a big box store or a retailer of some sort and like all of a sudden now you need to deliver you know from a thousand a day to 5,000 plus a day or you know many thousands a week so changeover that’s an important one. How I load it also like how do I maintain it right? I mean it’s really easy if I have a machine that’s a thousand or two thousand dollars but if I’m you know 10, 20, 30X that I mean that’s a totally different type of equipment and maintenance and training and everything else like you need to be ready for.

Q-That’s awesome okay and what would you want to tell customers about the products that we offer in the flow wrapper category who are thinking about purchasing one? Is there something advice that you would give them?  What do you want to say about our products for this market?

I mean I always say don’t buy for your need today right buy something a lot of times that you can grow into because you know equipment is an investment and it costs money and it costs time and it costs training and like it’s not like oh this will meet my needs today. Like think about where do you want your business to be in three years, five years and that will that equipment  give you that solution or are you buying under buying and then you’re gonna have to buy something else and change and learn and everything else so you know I mean obviously, you don’t want to over buy and have something you’re only running an hour a week right? That doesn’t make sense but make sure you’re buying something for the long term because you know it’s an investment. First of all second of all you don’t know where your business is going to go who knows where you’re going to package what’s our advantage in this category as far as our product line.

Yeah so we’re really where we play is in the startup type person right this is oftentimes the first flow wrapper we’ve seen before. It’s their first, second, third, fourth, fifth, right? Two you know a flow wrapper where customers are good packaging you know 150 to 200 packs a minute which if you think about high speed food, you think about a lot of candy bars that many of us try not to eat right their flow wrappers are running far more far faster than that they’re feeding it right off the bakery lines and things like that. I mean ours are kind of I’d say more for the middle start up to middle market. They’re priced well. We offer the training the support they’re easy to use and personally my favorite is our PAC FW 450S FLOW WRAPPER. It’s our all Servo flow wrapper which has been really great for customers.

Do you have any stories you can recall about the time you helped a customer with a flow wrapper or change to a flow wrapper?

You know Shannon, we do it all the time and I’ve been involved in you know helping customers place flow wrappers in the facility for I think 20 years so a  lot of times it’s energy bar manufacturers and they’re doing it by hand and you know they need to do something faster because they got that big contract and you know they get the product we test it for them. They come for the FAT the factory acceptance test. They have our technician come in for a couple days to do the startup and training maybe do some retraining a few months later once they got their hands you know on the machine and know it.

Q- One final question, is there anything you would want to say to Distributors that you would want them to know about our product line or about dealing with PAC Machinery?  

Yeah I mean as far as flow wrappers yeah I mean obviously if I’m a packaging distributor right, I’m only as good as the service manufacturer I work with provides so we’re very sensitive to that. We try to be very responsive. We have machines available with short lead times currently, which is not always the norm. I think that’s also important Shannon is choose the manufacturer that you view as a partner this is not a one-off transaction you will have to deal with them when something breaks down. You will have to deal with them when you want to do a changeover and ideally you found somebody that like as you as you grow you can get the second, third, fourth, fifth, sixth, machine from them and we do have customers like that.