Food packaging plays an essential role in preserving product quality, enhancing convenience and promoting brand identification.

The rapid emergence of COVID dramatically altered the food-packaging landscape, bringing new demands for single-serve packaging, aseptic materials, e-commerce-friendly packaging and more. As packaging has become significantly more complex and consumers more demanding, the need has only grown for strict hygienic procedures to ensure food safety, from the factory to the retail shelf to the table.

Jiri Duron is a senior product manager at Kollmorgen, where he's been a key contributor since 2007. With a master's degree in electrical engineering, Duron previously led the innovation engineering team, driving significant projects and product advancements.

Stricter Regulations and More Rigorous Cleaning Threaten Productivity

Food safety is regulated by the FDA in the U.S. and by the EFSA in the European Union. Other regions and countries have similar regulatory regimes. Over time, these regulations have become increasingly strict as governments respond to outbreaks of foodborne illnesses. For example, in the U.S., the Food Safety Modernization Act mandates a comprehensive range of preventive measures, inspections, tests and responses to violations and outbreaks of disease.

The threat of mandatory recalls, detention of products and suspension of facility registration pose a considerable risk to the profitability of food packaging operations. Manufacturers need to respond by enhancing the procedures for cleaning their food processing and packaging machines. Yet more rigorous cleaning can also threaten profitability, as frequent, high-pressure and high-temperature washdowns can mean substantial downtime and an unacceptable risk of costly equipment damage.

Meeting Food Safety Requirements While Maximizing OEE

To help food processors and packagers compete effectively while ensuring a safe food supply, machine OEMs need to rethink their designs at both the architectural and component level to simplify cleaning while maximizing overall equipment effectiveness.

For example, because motors are susceptible to damage due to water ingress, older machine designs often require shields or bags to protect motors during washdown, with the motors cleaned by hand in a separate operation. This increases the risk of inadequate cleaning, and the time-consuming bother of installing shields or bags can tempt cleaning crews to take shortcuts that compromise product safety and equipment reliability.

Clean-in-place designs feature fixed or dynamic spray devices that pump cleaning solutions throughout the machine and then rinse with minimal need for equipment disassembly and reassembly. Modular systems allow a production line to split into easily cleanable modules without the need to reconfigure equipment or to disconnect and reconnect cables.

Both architectures accelerate the cleaning process to minimize downtime and maximize productivity. But neither solves the problem of protecting motors from washdown damage.

Either shields or bags must be installed and removed to hand-clean motors separately, or else there needs to be a way to wash motors down directly without damaging them. In all cases, it’s essential to use motors that won’t corrode or shed paint chips, as these issues can contaminate food directly or create an environment that harbors pathogens.

It's also important to select motors that work with the control systems commonly used in the food processing and packaging industry to simplify machine design and avoid supplier lock-in.

Companies like Kollmorgen offer hygienic and washdown-ready motors that meet all these criteria. Some common application examples include:

Auger fillers

Auger filling machines are typically used for packaging flour, sugar, coffee, drink mixes and other dry powders, granules and particulates. The ability to purge lines and clean these machines in place is a significant advantage, especially for food packagers that handle several different products and wish to maximize productivity through rapid changeover.

These machines vary greatly in size and benefit from the simplicity, light weight and space savings of direct drive motion, eliminating the need for a gearbox. Kollmorgen, for example, offers several motor solutions that meet these needs, like stainless steel AKMH hygienic servo motors that are available in 19 standard sizes with multiple winding options.

Bottle filling machines

The machines that fill, cap and label beverage bottles are typically very large. The filling speed of each individual bottle is limited by the quantity and properties of the fluid—bottles must not be filled too fast. At the same time, production targets for beverage manufacturing are often very high, so these machines need the ability to handle and fill many bottles simultaneously.

In these large, multi-axis machines, positioning errors pose a significant risk of costly downtime and scrap. Transmission components such as gearboxes must be extremely precise, with minimal backlash, and they require replacement as they wear and lose accuracy. The need to clean transmission components only adds to the risk of wear due to ingress of water and cleaning fluids.

A better solution in many cases is to eliminate transmission components in favor of direct drive. Stainless steel AKMH servo motors offering precision in a wide range of options.

Automatic scales

Slices of cheese, meat and other products that are packaged on a plastic tray or container must be accurately weighed. The goal is to achieve a specified net weight with minimal product giveaway—or in the case of variable-weight packaging, to ensure accurate weight and pricing on each package.

If the motor is part of the scale system, minimal motor weight can minimize the risk that weight accuracy will be compromised. This is also the place to use relatively flexible cables, as a stiffer cable in motion can cause unnecessary drag that affects scale precision.

Another consideration is the motor’s thermal rise, as a hot motor in close proximity to a perishable product can affect food safety and quality. A motor that is cooler in operation also allows for faster cleaning, with less time spent waiting for the machine to cool down.

Whether you’re looking to upgrade an existing system or create an all-new design, working with the right partner will help you engineer the exceptional.