HawaiianHost is the leading exporter of macadamia nut chocolate in the United States and is the fourth largest chocolate exporter. Its output has continued to grow, and it has recently begun to launch one- and two-piece snack packages and put multiple portions of these small packages in stand-up pouches in order to achieve greater market appeal. Putting these new packages into practice was a major business initiative that HawaiianHost's facility in Gardena, California, had to learn from scratch. But it's more than worth it, as the new stand-up pouches, branded MyHawaii, lower the cost of HawaiianHost's products, making them more attractive to consumers and major retailers across the United States.

To meet these needs, HawaiianHost installed a paper cutter, a Linium301(TM) horizontal wrapping machine, a BaggerBoss(TM) automatic bagging machine and a Bosch Packaging Technologies Doboy Branch's B500(TM) sealing machine. "We saw this equipment at the 2002PACKEXPO show in Chicago and determined that it would meet our requirements for a flexible and reliable packaging system, and that we would be able to recover our investment quickly," said plant manager Ron Uno. Thanks to a strong 10-year relationship with Doboy's sales partner Nevco in Southern California, HawaiianHost is confident in the quality of both packaging equipment and service support. HawaiianHost purchased the equipment immediately and installed it in late 2002. Doboy assisted with the installation and startup of the equipment.

Wrapping, coding, weighing and inspection

When packaging two-packs, the first operation is a paper cutter cutting individual cardboards from a roll of paper card, fold one longitudinal edge of each paper card to form a "U" shape, and then place it in a single file on the conveyor belt. The conveyor belt carrying them passed in front of the worker, who placed two macadamia nuts on a paper card. One-pack packaging does not use paper cards. When packaging individual pieces, workers place the chocolate directly on the conveyor belt. The conveyor belt continues to move forward and enters the Linium301 horizontal packaging machine. The packaging machine pulls the film out of the film roll installed on the top of the machine, bypasses a series of rollers and enters the wrapping section. The machine wraps the film around the candy, and a longitudinal fin seal on the back of the package forms the film into a continuous tube. The film tube passes through a set of rollers equipped with heating rods, which seal the film horizontally before being cut out for individual packaging. The Markem 9840 TouchDry printer prints a date code on the film before it passes through a roller and is about to be wrapped around the product. TouchDry coders use ink rollers impregnated with hot-melt ink that won’t spill, splatter or smear the film. The ink dries instantly, so there is little chance of the film becoming smudged by the code.

The horizontal flowrap packaging machine wraps several candies in film. The film bag is then cut open and the film is heat-sealed using a heating rod. Before the candies are wrapped in film, a contact printer prints a date code onto the film.

The PLC-controlled packaging machine is equipped with a graphic control panel and servo-driven feed, fin sealing wheel, side grooves and cutting head. Operators can program the package length, run speed and dwell time for each product, and the data is saved in memory. When switching to a different product, the operator simply enters the product name and the machine automatically switches to the new operating settings. The packaging machine currently operates at a speed of 100 packages/minute but can also reach a 300 package/minute capacity if required.

Packs leaving the packaging machine pass through a LockInspectionSystems WeighChek weighing device and then pass through a LockMet30 metal detector. The weighing device is accurate to 1/2 gram and can store speeds and other operating settings for multiple products in memory, allowing settings to be recalled at the push of a button. The metal detector features on-screen analysis of detection parameters, which provides a visual depiction of the presence of contaminants.