Does my cap need to be round to be induction foil sealed? Does it need to be under 120mm in diameter? These are questions regularly asked by companies wishing to foil seal products with unusual or irregular shaped containers.
The answer is no. Thanks to the developments in Enercon Industries’ induction heat sealing technology over the past 40+ years, containers no longer need a round cap or to be under 120mm in diameter.
In fact, at Enercon Industries, we are frequently asked to seal innovative containers by companies who have discovered that many other induction sealing machines cannot.
The reason we can seal such products is due to our unique range of induction sealing coils.
Below we look at four unusual cap styles and explain how we helped achieve perfect foil seals every time.
Induction Sealing Conical Caps:
The conical cap provides manufacturers with both aesthetic and functional benefits when packaging products; it can help a product stand out on a supermarket shelf, as well as allowing the end user to apply the product more precisely. It is used for a wide variety of products, including sauces in the food industry through to eyedrops for pharmaceutical or veterinary industries.
Most of these products also require an induction foil seal to provide benefits including tamper evidence, shelf-life extension, and leak prevention. Given the large distance from the top of the cap to the foil liner, achieving a good induction seal is impossible without a specially designed coil.
However, Enercon Industries has been helping its customers successfully seal conical caps for many years with the use of its unique induction sealing coils.
Chris Mulcock, UK Sales Manager, explains:
“Packagers often don’t realise that the efficiency of the sealing operation depends on the design of the sealing head. The secret to creating fast, efficient, consistent sealing is the way that the energy from the coil is transferred into the foil induction seal. Our Deep Tunnel Coil is designed to focus the sealing energy directly to the foil’s position when using a conical cap.”
Among those customers was Mendes Gonçalves, one of Portugal’s largest sauce producers. The company decided to add a conical cap to its Paladin sauce range to enable a more precise application of the sauce for the end-user.
Carlos Prino, Industrial Projects Director at Mendes, said:
“Enercon Industries’ machines are the only induction sealers we can use to seal our gourmet culinary sauces because of the different style cap. When we wanted to start sealing the product, we sent samples to Enercon Industries to identify what would be the best configuration and now we are able to seal them quickly and easily. It is very easy to seal with an Enercon Industries sealing machine.
Enercon Industries also worked with Polish brand, Vetoquinol Biowet Sp Zoo, who needed reliable seals for their cat eye drops. As well as the distance from the top of the cap to the foil liner, this application also included a small cap diameter of just 16mm.
Enercon Industries offered Vetoquinol Biowet free sealing trials prior to purchasing an induction cap sealer to identify the correct set up required for a perfect seal.
Daniel Adamski Investment Specialist for Vetoquinol said
“We chose Enercon Industries because of the collaboration with us in sealing trials to ensure a perfect seal for this difficult to seal container and cap, and their wealth of application experience as the market leader.”
Induction Sealing Postal Packs
As the popularity of e-commerce grew, packagers began looking at ways to reduce the cost of delivery, while still providing a positive experience for the customer.
In the pharmaceutical industry, the traditional round containers used for pills and vitamins were proving costly to deliver and caused inconvenience to the customer if the product couldn’t be delivered and subsequently had to be collected from the Post Office.
The solution was to move to a slimline, rectangular pack (known as a PontPack) that would fit through the average UK letterbox.
One early adopter of the postal pack was mail-order company Healthspan, who soon discovered that the container’s unusual shape was causing difficulties when trying to apply a strong hermetic seal to its rectangular neck.
With an induction foil liner being one of the easiest and most cost-efficient ways to achieve tamper evidence and meet packaging regulations, a solution was needed.
They found the solution from induction sealing specialists, Enercon Industries Ltd, who were able to seal the product with one of their unique tunnel coils. The induction coil allowed for the even distribution of energy over the neck of the container, creating a perfect seal without overheating.
Health supplement supplier Lindens also experienced the same issues.
Dave Broadhead, Director at Lindens Apothecary, said:
“Being quite flexible, we found that the bottles, PontPacks, could easily burst their seal when being handled roughly. As many of our products are ultimately sold mail-order, damaged seals could be a large and expensive problem.”
They purchased an Enercon Super Seal™ 75 as the solution.
Mr Broadhead added:
“It took less than an hour to set up and start running. It delivers 100% reliable foil seals that do not blow, even if the finished product is dropped or roughly handled.”
Induction Sealing Caps with Brushes
Traditionally, an induction heat seal liner is used to close a container. However, for some, it also acts as the delivery mechanism when using the product.
This is often the case with products featuring a brush-style cap, including Dr Beckmann’s Carpet Stain Remover. Mounted on top of the screw on cap is a sponge/brush applicator which delivers the cleaning fluid direct to the stain without removing the cap. For this design to work without over-wetting the carpet this clever packaging design relies on induction cap sealing with an Enercon induction sealing machine.
As with the conical cap, the distance from the top of the cap to the induction foil seal, can be a challenge for many induction cap sealers. However, once more, Enercon Industries’ deep tunnel coil has been specifically designed to tackle such challenges.
The difficulty with this container doesn’t stop there though. Typically, the consumer removes the foil seal prior to using a product. However, in this instance, the consumer is told to remove the cap, pierce the induction foil seal with a pin, leaving it in place and then to replace the sponge/brush applicator. To use on a stain the bottle is inverted and squeezed until the sponge is wetted with the cleaning solution. Then the bottle is pushed and pulled against the carpet in the cleaning action. And this happens time and time again throughout the lifetime of the product in the home.
Paul Bennion, European Sales Director for Enercon Industries, explains:
“This action puts tremendous pressure on the induction seal, not only is there pressure from squeezing, but the bottle is flexed as the cleaner is used. The quality of the foil seal is essential to the correct usage of the product. Dr Beckmann’s require 100% consistency of seal to ensure their customers’ satisfaction.”
Induction Sealing Large Caps (over 120mm in diameter)
Traditionally induction heat sealing was used for cap diameters up to 120mm, but in recent years Enercon Industries has had regular requests to seal larger containers, many of them round. One of the most popular is a cap with a 150-155mm diameter. These containers are used across a range of industries and products including, protein powder from the sports nutrition industry through to industrial grease for the automotive industry.
As with all unusual applications, Enercon Industries offers free foil sealing trials to ensure the product can be successfully sealed prior to any purchase of an induction sealing machine. The first trials of a large cap revealed that our unique universal coil could in fact seal these containers to a high standard.
Since then, we have worked with many more companies looking to seal containers with large caps. We even worked with one customer looking to seal 1,000 litre IBC containers for shipping food products and we provided bespoke Super Seal™ Juniors as the solution.
Looking to seal an unusual container?
If you’re looking to foil seal an unusual container, get in touch with us today. As well as expert advice, we also run free application testing to ensure your product is compatible with induction sealing prior to any purchase.
