Soleco upgrades packaging equipment for its Florette brand

Soleco, Europe's leading specialist producer of pre-prepared salads, has recently installed Ilapak's Vegatronic vertical, form, fill and seal (VFFS) packaging machines at its factories in the UK and France for its premium Florette brand.

The company has been using Ilapak's packaging equipment for over 12 years and currently has 12 Vegatronic machines, a combination of Vegatronic 3000 high speed, continuous film motion machines and Vegatronic 2000 intermittent models.

Soleco is using them at its £12 million (€18.1m) state-of-the-art factory in Lichfield, Staffs and at its plant in L'Isle-sur-la-Sorgue in the south of France.

Florette claims to be the fastest growing brand within the prepared salads sector, with sales increasing at over 20 per cent a year, and the company is continuing to install further Vegatronic packaging lines to increase production capacity in line with this expansion.

According to Soleco's packing manager, Francois Cheron, the company specifies Ilapak's Vegatronic range for its ability to combine high speeds, delicate product handling and first class pack quality.

He said:"Ilapak's machines are fast, reliable and can handle delicate produce without damage. They are also versatile and easy to operate - there are 60 different products and pack sizes in the Florette range, with new products added regularly and we sometimes need to carry out pack changeovers 10 times a day. With the Vegatronic machines this is easy and quick to do and takes only a couple of minutes. The modified atmosphere facility is also very easy to set up.​

"We receive excellent service from Ilapak. Engineers are very quick to respond and they understand our needs completely - they are always willing to carry out modifications to a line in order to meet our changing requirements."​

Soleco is currently packing pre-prepared salads at speeds of over 70 bags a minute on the Vegatronic 3000 machines - these machines use a continuous film motion to form a bag from a single reel of wrapping material, unwound at a constant speed while filling and sealing the bag simultaneously, using a box motion sealing system.

The Vegatronic 2000 intermittent series is used to make catering size packs and achieves speeds of up to 50 bags a minute. Both types of machine are controlled by an industrial PC with infinite programme memory and have a range of standard electronic features such as no-product-no bag to further enhance production line efficiency.

A global concern, Ilapak is based in the UK and worked with Soleco on the projects from its operations centre in Middlesex.