Expert insights: Packaging

Packaging can be both a science and an art to carefully preserve a product and simultaneously stimulate consumer senses. Modern society is dependent on a large variety of packaged products such as drinks, pasteurized products, active food products or medicine.

The product packaging process has evolved from a segmented approach to fully automated modular lines where products like milk and their exterior packaging in plastic or cardboard are processed simultaneously to consistently produce shipment ready products.

These modular packaging lines consist of an injection molding setup installed with a variety of blow mold, thermoforming molds, deep cavity rigid plastic molds and multi-cavity molds continuously churning out thousands of parts per minute.

Over the last decades, plastic has emerged as the leading material for industry solutions due to its chemical inertness, formability and its ease of bulk processing with cost efficiency. However, extensive consumption abuse leading to wastage has resulted in adverse environmental effects. This apparent impact has increased consciousness among global consumers and producers and is transforming industries towards the adoption of new policies, manufacturing processes and product design to reduce the harm and long-term impact of unchecked plastic consumption, providing benefits to consumers and the environment. Plastic packaging supply chain partners including consumers, producers, suppliers, governments and policy makers must bear collective responsibility to achieve sustainability in the future.

Precision machine tool suppliers such as GF Machining Solutions, along with mold makers, play a significant role in ensuring the industrialization of packaging industry solutions. Mold and tool manufacturers categorize the emerging industry challenges into three key categories: product design, injection material and manufacturing technologies.

Modern product packaging is designed for ease of use, long lifecycles and perfect product preservation while providing a distinctive, attractive consumer experience. The conscious behavior of consumers and producers is pushing investigation into new materials for biocompatibility, recyclability and longer shelf life and their feasibility for industry integration. 

GF Machining Solutions supports mold makers for plastic injection through its technologies and innovation, so they can achieve the desired manufacturing, while assuming their financial and social responsibilities. Our machining technology innovations provide the means for the realization of consumer design trends and the ability to machine a variety of tool steels to facilitate the injection of new material. Through our simultaneous five-axis, high-speed precision Milling technology we offer a solution to produce injection molding inserts with a very high contour accuracy and surface quality, eradicating the need of environmentally harsh and labor-intensive post-processing.

GF Machining Solutions' Laser technology brings design innovation to consumers by directly structuring the mold insert surface for aesthetic and functional textures. Laser technology offers the ability to machine varied materials, perfectly replicate digital design and texture complex 3D cavities while eliminating the need for environmentally harsh and time-consuming etching processes. 

With customers and industry partners, GF Machining Solutions is continuously searching for the best solutions for the injection of sustainable, biocompatible plastics and new ways to design and to produce molds for these plastics. The mold requirements vary significantly as new plastic material differs from traditional materials in the chemical composition and thermal behavior, thus needing high-resistance mold tool steel and injection processing with extended temperature control.

With  70 years of expertise as a pioneer mold manufacturing machine tool supplier, GF Machining Solutions is duty bound to offer innovative solutions to enhance quality, reduce cost and increase productivity.