Ghiradrdelli's packaging strategies lead to a bright future: the premium chocolate maker celebrates its 150th anniversary with new products, upscale packages, expanded distribution and state-of-the-art packaging operations

Food & Drug Packaging, July, 2002 by Lisa McTigue Pierce

RELATED ARTICLE: A walk down the packaging line.

Ghirardelli accommodated the increase in production from its expanded distribution by running additional shifts. Now, the plant normally operates five days a week for three shifts. During peak production--which is from June to December--they'll go to six days a week for three shifts.

Immediately after chocolate mold production, rows of product travel down to the flowrapping area. Single rows are transferred by vacuum onto the infeed conveyors of three flowrappers from ACMA GD. Each wrapper operates at speeds up to 900 squares per minute (see top photo).

Output from one of these flowrappers goes directly into bottom-sealed formed cases for subsequent repackaging offline, both in-house (for lay-flat bags of mixed product Squares) and at contract packagers (for tins and pillow boxes).

Output from the other two flowrappers falls onto inclined conveyors, which elevate the wrapped products to a mezzanine level. Here, the Filled Squares gently drop onto a straight-line conveyor that jogs back and forth to feed two Eagle combination scales.

One scale is atop the SIG Pack Infinity vertical form-fill-seal machine that produces the lay-flat bag at speeds of 75 bags per minute. Lay-flat bags--which will be phased out by 2003 with the stand-up bag--are then checkweighed and manually packed into cases.

The other scale is above the Thurlings stand-up bag filler (see bottom photo). Pre-made stand-up bags are manually placed in the infeed magazine and are transferred into the rotary filler by vacuum. There, an air blast opens the bags. Mechanical grippers hold the bags securely throughout rotary filling by spreading their fingers on the inside of the bag.

Stand-up bags are filled by weight with pro-wrapped Filled Squares at speeds of 48 bags per minute. The top of the bag is folded over twice and sealed with hot melt. A hot stamp unit adds a date code on the sealed fold.

After filling and sealing, bags drop to a take-away conveyor and pass over an Ishida checkweigher. Correctly filled bags continue down to where workers manually pack them, upright, into formed cases.

Filled cases then travel down another conveyor to a Loveshaw top-and-bottom case taper. After that, pallets are manually loaded and moved to the finished-goods warehouse, which is climate controlled.

Off-line, a worker cues a Diagraph thermal transfer unit to print and dispense pressure-sensitive bar-code shipping labels. Labels are manually applied to two sides before the pro-printed case is erected. According to Wildberger, the company plans to install an ink jet case coder in the first quarter of next year to replace this separate operation.

Another off-line operation involves filling lay-flat bags with up to four different flavors of Filled Squares. Prepacked cases of Filled Squares are brought up to the mezzanine level, where an operator loads hoppers that feed into an Ishida 24-head combination scale from Heat and Control. The scale drops equal amounts by weight of the different flavors into a SIG Pack Infinity vertical form-fill-seal machine to produce mixed-flavor bags at speeds of 55 bags per minute. About 20% of the Squares production is used for mixed-flavor bags.