Pentti Kari has seen packagings come and go
Fitter Pentti Kari has worked for Paulig for “a solid 40 years”. In that time, he’s got to know many and various methods and materials for packaging coffee.
Among the advances, Pentti has particularly fond memories for the 750-gram Plus Pak vacuum packaging launched in the 1980s. “It was a great step forwards because changes are very rarely made in package sizes. No other manufacturer had anything like it. When the Plus Pak was taken off the market it caused annoyance, especially in the countryside, because it made a good box for worms after it was emptied,” Pentti recalls.
The machinery has also been replaced a number of times in the course of Pentti’s career. Modern packaging machines are constantly being fine-tuned as materials evolve.
All changes in packaging materials or thicknesses required careful resetting and testing on the machines. The quality of the product, production rate or durability of the packages must not suffer from any changes. “With 128 packages a minute coming off the conveyor belt, they have to withstand it. Minimising wastage is also important from the environmental viewpoint,” Pentti Kari notes.
Paulig possesses unmatched knowhow, as even packaging machinery manufacturers don’t have as lengthy experience of what skilled hands can get out of the hardware. “Originally the machines were meant for making single laminate, but we managed to produce double laminate with them,” Pentti reports. “With double laminate the coffee doesn’t need to be in double packaging as is usually done in the rest of Europe.”
Having seen a lot in his career as a fitter, Pentti reckons smaller package sizes will be the trend of tomorrow. He points to Cupsolo single-serving capsules as an example of this. “The world has changed a lot that way in the past forty years. People today want convenience and individual alternatives.” Plus Pak is not likely to be coming back.
"Minimising wastage is also important from the environmental viewpoint."
- Pentti Kari, fitter