Proseal's flexible solutions invaluable for soft fruit growers

Proseal's advanced tray sealing machines help growers meet the ever-increasing demand for soft fruit - which has been particularly strong during the current pandemic - by offering high-quality, flexible sealing solutions that deliver sustainability.

As soft fruit volumes continue to climb, and with the market for fruit grown in the UK now estimated to be worth over £670 million a year, manufacturers are looking for flexible solutions that can meet the demanding high-speed requirements driven by the seasons. Equally important is the need to minimize the use of packaging materials without impacting the pack's effectiveness, particularly its ability to offer product protection to help reduce food waste.

Proseal offers an extensive range of high-quality manual, semi-automatic, and fully automatic tray sealers, designed to be flexible and incorporating several unique design features that maximize speeds and efficiencies. In addition, Proseal machines' two-minute rapid-tool-change means endless varieties of tray formats, materials and sizes can be sealed on one machine, allowing users to switch from one tray type to another quickly.

"Our tray sealing machines offer fruit growers greater flexibility to seal different designs and sizes of trays with efficiency and accuracy," explains Tony Burgess, sales director, Proseal. "This, combined with our innovative technologies and production lead times, make us a world leader in tray sealing soft fruits.

"ProMotion, our continuous infeed technology, for example, has the potential to increase the speed of a tray sealer by up to 30% while creating calm machine operations which ensure a smoother, more stable journey to the sealing station. This is particularly beneficial to delicate produce, such as soft fruit."

Proseal also manufactures a diverse and customizable line of intelligent conveyor systems designed to create ultimate line control and optimization and therefore suitable for the fast-moving soft fruit industry.

The company has pioneered several important sustainability initiatives throughout its 23 years. Proseal was the driving force behind replacing traditional clam-shell punnets with top film-sealed varieties, which has become commonplace in soft fruit markets across Europe and now North America, helping to minimize plastic usage around 45% in most cases.

More recently, the company has been at the forefront of introducing new recyclable and compostable trays and film for fruit that can further reduce plastic usage by as much as 96%.

"Proseal continues to strive to develop the most effective and sustainable sealing solutions for its customers," concludes Tony Burgess.

"We are proud of the many innovations we have developed for the effective and efficient tray sealing of soft fruit. And we will continue to develop the appropriate technologies to help support sustainable solutions that deliver quality."

Proseal is part of the JBT Corporation family, a leading global technology solutions provider to high-value segments of the food processing industry, committed to providing a service that surpasses customer expectations.