A Quick Recap: the Rovema Brown Bag Blog Series
If you’ve been following along with this series for the past few months, you might want to skip this first section! It’s a recap for our new folks joining today. If you’re reading this series for the first time, WELCOME. We’re glad you’re here.
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This is part 4 of our Brown Bag Blog Series dedicated to unpacking (pun intended! ????) various bag style options for your Rovema vertical form fill seal machine. These posts, like brown bag webinars or in-person meetings, are designed to be short, sweet, and to the point.
From our many years of experience, we know that you should take the time to carefully consider which bag style best fits your product’s needs. However, we’ve often seen throughout the industry that these VFFS bag styles are often chosen by default or given little thought.
Thinking through the strengths and considerations of different bag styles pays off greatly in the long run.
As such, we’re releasing these posts to give you a quick overview of the various bag style options for your Rovema VFFS machine. In each, we outline the advantages and considerations of a given bag style, talk about its appearance and how it is formed, and discuss its place within current market trends.
If you’re new to this series and interested in the other bag styles we’ve explored, you can find ‘em here:
- Block Bottom Bags
- Gusseted Pillow Bags
- Flex Can Stand Up Pouches
Once you’re caught up, read on for our exploration of unique ways to use Sachet Style Packages.
Want a more in-depth dive? Check out our Comprehensive Bag Style Guide!
A quick side note before we jump into this month’s bag style: the blog posts in this series are a great starting point for finding the right bag style for your Rovema VFFS machine. However, if you’re looking for a more in-depth analysis, be sure to check out our Rovema Bag Style Guide.
Sachets: Great for Marketing, Great for Efficiency
What is a Sachet Style Bag?
Sachet Style Bags are lay flat packages with either 3 or 4 seals. These packages are economical to produce on vertical form fill and seal machines and have a high amount of print area on both the front and back panels (making them a win in most marketing teams’ books).
3 side seal bags can often be produced at high production speeds, and they are especially ideal for products distributed in small quantities where accuracy is especially important.
Though traditionally made on Horizontal Form Fill Seal baggers or multi-lane sachet machines, they are also an option for your Rovema VFFS machine. The major benefit to running sachets on VFFS vs HFFS? They have a way smaller footprint.
What is the design of a 3 side seal and 4 side seal Bag?
The Sachet Style Bag is a lay flat package with a top seal and two side seals. It also has an optional fourth seal that can be added for premium design purposes.
Because of its design, the Sachet Style Bag is well-loved by marketing teams: it has a very high ratio of print area on both the front and back panels, unobscured by seals or seams.
What are the advantages of a Sachet Style Bag?
As mentioned above, the Sachet Style Bag is dreamy for marketing teams because of the large panels on which they can print graphics, copy, and other required information. Sachet Style Bags are also simple and economical to make, and it is easy to achieve high production speeds with them on your Rovema VFFS machine.
This bag style is great for smaller product amounts where accuracy is important, and they can easily be customized to include hole punches and easy open and reclosable features.
What are considerations for Sachet Packaging?
When choosing which bag style to use for your Rovema VFFS bagger, it is important to think through both the strengths and considerations of a given bag style. A few questions you might want to ask yourself if you are considering a Sachet Style Bag are:
- Do I need a pouch that has stand up ability? Since the Sachet Style Bag is not a stand up pouch, you might want to consider Block Bottom Bags, Flex Can Packages, or another style of stand up package.
- Am I comfortable with a high packaging material to product ratio? To achieve the full front and back panel design, the Sachet Style Bag does have a higher packaging material to product ratio than other VFFS bag styles.
- Do I need to package large quantities of my product? The Sachet Style Bag is usually more well-suited for smaller amounts of product.
If you have more specific questions or want to talk through bag styles for a specific product or project, hit us up here!
What types of products would a 3 side seal and 4 side seal bag be good for?
For the reasons we explored above, many industries utilize the sachet style bag for their products. Companies using a ROVEMA VFFS machine as their 3 side seal pouch making machine to package the following, among other, products:
- Snacking and Bakery Items
- Beef Jerky (sachet style bags are the industry go-to)
- Pharmaceutical powders
- Nutraceutical powders
- Salts, spices, and seasonings
- Dehydrated soups, gravy, and other mixes
- Seeds and Nuts
We’re here to help! Let’s work together to find a bag style that works best for your Rovema VFFS bagger.
In our first blog post in this series, we talked about our “why” for these posts.
Through our many years of experience in the industry, we’ve seen what can happen when customers fail to consider different bag styles and default to one without thinking about their product’s unique needs.
Myperfectpack is a leading name in successfully meeting the emerging market requirements of Three Side Seal Pouches. These are made sizes color available by us in different shapes, and size as well as color options and can be easily sealed from all three sides thus ensuring the item packed inside is safe from the possible contaminants. Moreover, these pouches are also leak-proof in the finish, thus making these widely demanded among different industrial packaging applications.
3 side seal pouches have more packaging capacity
3 side seal pouches are made from one-piece film
3 side seal pouches are normally not gusseted
3-side seal pouches have an array of benefits that have revolutionized packaging industry such as:
3-side seal pouches are versatile packaging solutions that can be used with different products.
They are light in weight compared to the rigid packaging products hence they add a negligible weight to the product.
This in turn does not affect the overall weight hence making transportation inexpensive.
You can easily customize the pouches to fit your needs or product preference in terms of size, color, design, and shape.
3-side seal pouches are made from materials whose major characteristics is excellent barrier against environmental factors.
They have better temperature tolerance hence can be heat sealed without damaging the pouches.
Maintain product freshness for longer due to the aluminum lining in the inner layer.
3-side seal pouches are made from readily available materials which do not cost much thus are generally inexpensive.
They are user friendly as dispensing products is easy due to the availability of different closure options.
The materials are stable hence do not react with any packaged product.
They have been tested and found to be safe for packaging products for human consumption.
If you are looking for more details, kindly visit Renhe.
Limitations of 3 Side Seal Pouches
3-side seal pouches cannot be recycled due to difficulty in separating the combined material into single layers.
You cannot use most of them in microwaves.
Uses of 3 Side Seal Pouches
3 side seal pouches are used for packaging both food and non-food items.
The food items include; candies, chips-snacks, meat, sugar, green peas, etc. Non-food items include; drugs, beauty cream, seeds, toys, among others.
Best Material for 3 Side Seal Pouch
You can choose up to four film material laminations that best suits your products’ packaging needs.
They include polyethylene terephthalate (PET), foil, kraft paper, polyester (poly), aluminum, nylon, etc.
Some of the layerings we offer are:
PET/Poly is very versatile but a bit rigid.
Kraft paper/Poly/ 120 GSM Paper: give a very strong pouch with great mechanical strength. They are also available in brown, white or black colours.
The chosen materials possess qualities such as;
Good temperature tolerance.
Have great structural strength.
Are able to protect against external factors such as moisture, light, dust, bacteria, etc.
Digital Printing on 3 Side Seal Pouchsurfaces
This involves direct printing of digital images or text on media surfaces such as plastic, paper, fabric, etc.
The image to be printed is sent to the digital printing machine as a digital file in form of a PDF.
The artworks to be printed are created digitally using computer software hence eliminating several steps present in traditional printing methods.
Digital printing machine utilizes cyan, magenta black and yellow (CMYK) colours to print images or texts.
The digital printing option is cost-effective, faster, ideal for small orders, and leaves a clear high-quality finish.
Surface Finish Options for Three Side Seal Pouches
The type of surface finish for the 3-side seal pouches is dependent on what you want to achieve.
There are two surface finish options such as matte and glossy.
1. Matte Finish
Matte finish is a smooth, dull but sophisticated surface treatment that exude some level of professionalism.
They are not shiny hence they do not have a blinding effect to consumers especially in sunlight.
They offer great printing surface for images and texts hence it is easier to read font on matte pouches.
The disadvantage of using matte finish is that they tend to be dull thus making the graphics dull too.
Besides, they are more expensive than the glossy finish.
2. Glossy Finish
Unlike a matte finish, a glossy finish is a shiny, high profile and slightly textured look of the pouch’s outer layer.colourful They are highly waterproof, attractive, and stand out easily on a shelf.
If you intend to have colorful artwork on your 3-side seal pouch then a glossy finish is recommended.
This is because the glossy background will enhance your prints giving them a brighter and quality image.
Besides, they are also great when introducing a new product in the market because they will easily attract customers.
Quality materials are used to achieve a glossy look therefore, your products are guaranteed safety and enhanced barrier against environmental factors.
The downside of using glossy finish is they tend to shine hence making it difficult to read the instructions.
How to Fill and Hand-fill Seal 3-Side Seal Pouches
To hand fill your products, you need measuring vessels to ensure uniformity in your packed products.
The vessels can be spoons or jugs depending on the product status such as liquid, powder or solids.
Once you fill the pouches, you can seal them by hand as per the closure method or a heat-sealing machine.Heat sealers apply heat in sealing the pouches and are available either in small volumes or automated for big factories.
When using automated machines, it is possible to vacuum seal the pouches by sucking out air from the pouches.
Once the pouches are filled, they are moved to the sealing area to remove excess air and the pouches are sealed accordingly.