Several factors play a role in virtually every successful package production run and finished package.

Scott Hetherton, general manager at Pewaukee, Wisconsin-based HFM Packaging, discusses new developments in recloseable flexible packaging.

Q: With more converters having to carry out shorter runs, how are you adapting your machinery to meet these changing requirements?

Flexible Packaging recently caught up with Sebastian Huennefeld, technical sales manager, extrusion equipment, Windmoeller & Hoelscher, for an update on all-things extrusion.

Currently available pouch manufacturing machines feature critical enhancements that address present market trends and demands such as short production runs, quick changeovers, film alternatives to polyester and recyclability.

Hundreds of packaging converters, their suppliers and customers will converge at historic Lambeau Field in Green Bay, Wisconsin, April 13 and 14 for the 9th-annual Converters Expo, one of North America’s largest events showcasing equipment and materials suppliers to the converting industry.

For all of the rhetoric and publicity around “electronic packaging” and “smart labels,” there is a fundamental disconnect. Electronic manufacturing, which occupies its own ecosystem, is not naturally part of the brand or packaging manufacturing infrastructure.

Back in 2010, roll-to-roll printed electronics was the frontier of universities and researchers.

Within an industrial park on the outskirts of downtown Columbus, Ohio sits a quarter-mile long, 100,000 square-foot facility that produces hundreds of millions of packages each year.

An alternative to transparent barrier film containing PVdC (polyvinylidene chloride) has been on the wish list of food manufacturers, CPGs and converters for years.