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FFS IN GREENVILLE By Jamie Rhyne, Greenville Plant Manager

November 2012 marked a milestone for Bostik – the final phase to eliminate tray production in the Americas. Trays, a legacy package, are not only costly to produce, but the market demands a cleaner and easier package – the SOLUTION: form, fill, and seal = FFS .

Planning started much earlier than November, so the first chub produced in mid-November was a great accomplishment for those involved with the project. Since that time, the equipment has produced over a half million chubs – and that is only the beginning. With a market eager for this innovative packaging, countless hours from the project and process engineer were put into the equipment to produce this customer friendly package form; as well as the efforts put forth by the operators working through the frustrations around this new technology. While we have had our “treasures” with the startup, we continue to make great strides each day towards optimizing the equip- ment. This will enable Bostik to better serve the market today and into the future. With the help of Applied Technologies and utilizing customer feedback, the Greenville plant has uncovered many new opportunities to continue to improve our process to make the FFS package even better. What is it and how is it different than Omni Melt? Omni Melt is an underwater co-extrusion process that utilizes 100% Bostik produced product. The “skin” of the Omni Melt is Bostik chemistry. FFS is what it says: a bag is formed using a third party film, filled with molten adhesive, and sealed. This entire process occurs under the waterfall of 40°F water. The fundamental difference between the two package types is the chemistries each are aligned around. Omni Melt is works very well for high viscosity products. Conversely, FFS works more optimally with the lower viscosity products. In addition, FFS is more versatile allowing for smaller quantity runs instead of the long runs necessary for Omni Melt optimization. What are the next steps? Equipment optimization is well underway with additional resources being provided to the plant to successfully complete the project. The goal is to have all current tray-customers fully converted from trays by 2Q of 2014. While also moving out of the tray package, the plan is to move all current pellet-in-the-bag (PIB) volume to this innovative package as well.

CHUBS

OMNI MELT

CHUBS READY TO SHIP

Greenville invites you to visit and check out this innovative package on your next trip through South Carolina!

September 2013

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