The Packaging School team was on the road last month — flying from Greenville, South Carolina to Pennsylvania to visit the Leybold team in Export, PA for our Learning of the Month series.

Nick Riedl (Creative Manager @ Packaging School):

Vacuum technology has played an important role in various packaging operations for decades. You've likely seen vacuum sealed meat or vegetables at the grocery store—an innovation made possible by companies like Leybold. As a pioneer in vacuum technology for over a century, Leybold’s products are integral to packaging lines worldwide.

We recently took a trip to Export, Pennsylvania, to visit the Leybold team and learn more about their operation, the role vacuum technology plays in the packaging process, and trends they are noticing in the industry.

What are the current challenges and trends in the vacuum solutions' market?

Alex Kun (Sales Manager @ Leybold):

The current trends in industry aren't unique to the vacuum solutions market. Right now, a lot of companies are dealing with staffing shortages. It's very difficult to hire high-quality maintenance technicians, and it's even more difficult to keep them. There's a lot of look into cost savings as well. The cost of goods as a whole are going up, and then you're also looking at increasing your production capabilities while cutting those costs.

There's a lot of conversation about automation in the industry right now. It removes a lot of the human factor. It makes life a little bit easier for the factories themselves.

We're also looking at low maintenance equipment. When you don't have as many technicians, it's much harder to get the work done. So, when you have equipment that doesn't require maintenance—significantly helps there.

One of the lowest hanging fruits is the vacuum technology equipment. The challenge is, a lot of companies aren't aware of the new technology that's in the marketplace and what it can do, or aware of companies like Leybold and how we can support them.

For instance, companies can address automation and the low maintenance pretty quickly and easily. Right now, the standard vacuum pump technology used, especially in the food packaging industry, is oil sealed rotary vein pumps.

That's a 100-year-old technology. It requires a ton of maintenance. You have to change the oil and the filters every time the pump gets contaminated. When it leaks onto the floor, you need to change the shaft seals.

Over time, the pump's performance degrades because it's a contact technology, it wears itself down. You've gotta do full rebuilds, not to mention it has a little to no intelligence capabilities. It does not align with where manufacturing is going.

That's why at Leybold, we're teaching our partners what we call the “wet-to-dry” movement, which is moving from the oil seal technology of yesterday into the new dry screw pump technology of tomorrow.

Dry screw pumps are non-contact-based vacuum pump technology, meaning they're not gonna wear themselves down over time. So, your performance year five is the same as day one.

You also don't have oil inside of the pumping chamber, so when you get contamination in there, it just goes through the pump—it doesn't affect your performance or change your maintenance intervals. The pumps also have VFDs and temperature sensors, so it aligns with the automation sector because you can control the pump's pumping speed when you'd like for energy savings, and you also get data back from the technology itself.

When you add all those factors together, plus it actually has a smaller footprint than the older technology (meaning you can put it closer to the machine), you're now getting to a point where you're dealing with the automation side of it, the low maintenance side of it, and you are able to increase your production.

How do advancements in vacuum technology impact manufacturing processes?

Alex Kun:

The advancements in the vacuum technology really lead to a couple of things. You've got a lot less maintenance, meaning you've got a lot less downtime to plan around, and you also have more reliability because the pumps don't wear down over time.

Between those two things, you can plan your downtime and you don't have to deal with the high stress moments of pumps just failing unexpectedly. Ultimately, that's gonna just lead to more production out of facilities and less stress on their staff and management. 

What strategies are effective in promoting sustainability in vacuum technology?

Alex Kun:

So, right now there's a lot of focus on carbon footprint reduction. When we're designing our vacuum pumps, we're trying to make them very energy efficient with VFDs or highly efficient motors. We're also looking at the maintenance side of things, so the oil requirements, the spare part requirements, dealing with the waste disposal.

When you take all of that into account and you remove that, you're greatly lowering your carbon footprint, and that's a huge goal of ours.

How does vacuum technology specifically benefit food preservation and packaging?

Alex Kun:

When it comes to food preservation and packaging, oxygen is the enemy. Oxygen leads to a lot of the spoilage of the food, and so when you're able to remove that from the picture, you'll get longer lifespan of the product, it'll be fresher, and, as we're focusing on less waste in this country, that's really a key area where it helps.

The food packaging side, it's all vacuum packaging that that would play a part of. So, you have modified atmosphere packaging, and you have skin packaging. And the difference between the two is the modified air packaging pulls a slight vacuum and then backfills—removes the oxygen, backfills with nitrogen to help with the shelf life. 

Oxygen will oxidize the food and lead to spoilage faster, so you're able to keep your food fresher for longer when you backfill with nitrogen. Skin packaging is similar, but you're removing all the oxygen—you're not backfilling, and so you have a tighter packaging product.

You're also able to keep many of the juices in, keep the texture the same, and when you're moving the products around, it takes up less volume because you don't have empty space.

How do you work with food manufacturers to identify their specific needs?

Alex Kun:

When we engage with food packaging companies, first we wanna understand their operation as a whole. We wanna see what they're doing upstream and downstream of the vacuum packaging equipment. It helps to know if we can actually help speed up their line or if there's a bottleneck somewhere else for at least one of the points.

We also try to get an understanding of what the company mandates are, so if they're looking at saving on the utility side, just taking a note of that because sometimes that's an area where we can help.

Nick Riedl:

We'd like to thank the team at Leybold for taking the time to meet with us. If you'd like to learn more about the work that Leybold is doing, you can visit them online at their website.

As always, please subscribe to the Packaging School on YouTube for more educational content, just like this.