Making the Cut

The use of fresh-cut vegetables for foodservice has seen significant growth in the past few years, driven by hygiene regulations, customer preference for fresher meals and convenience factors, such as quicker cooking times and reduced preparation time. According to the Fresh Cut Produce Association, fresh-cut fruits and vegetables make up one of the fastest-growing food categories in U.S. supermarkets with sales increasing from $3.3 billion in 1994 to $15 billion in 2005 and expansion set to continue.

However, innovative new packaging and processing developments are essential to the industry's further growth. Food producers, having traditionally focused on more heavily processed products — such as raw ingredients, bulk or frozen items — are now seeking avenues to deliver their products to the market in refrigerated fresh-cut formats. To take advantage of this opportunity, food manufacturers are turning to a new array of packaging and processing technologies.

Keystone Potato Products, a Hegins, Pa.-based producer of dehydrated potato flakes and potato flour, exemplifies this trend. As demand for refrigerated fresh-cut potatoes has grown since Keystone was founded in 2003, the company saw an opportunity to expand into a new market sector, add value to its product and drive profitability. The organizational structure of Keystone — essentially a cooperative of dozens of potato growers — gives the company an almost unlimited supply of raw potato product, including white potatoes, russet potatoes, red potatoes and yellow potatoes. Thus, it was simply a matter of building the processing and packaging capacity to break into the market.

With the objective of producing a shelf-stable refrigerated product of fresh-cut potatoes in four formats (French fry cut, dice, slice and quarter potato wedges) and two package sizes (five- and 10-pound bags), Keystone made the decision to expand its capacity with a new production line at its Hegins location. In specifying the processing-line components, a key requirement was a packaging solution that could handle a range of product formats and package sizes, ultimately opting for a vertical form-fill-and-seal machine from Bosch Packaging Technology.

Within each of the four potato formats, there is a diversity of sizes. For example, dices come in sizes from 3/8-inch square to 1 ½-inch square. The form-fill-seal machine is specifically designed to package free flowing, loose products and can handle a variety of product sizes and formats. Incoming product flow is continuous and enters the machine from the top, fed by a weigher integrated into the packaging machine's control system. Simple adjustments to the weigher allow for a quick changeover between product formats and sizes, dependent on the target weight for the bag.

Keystone is using the packaging machine for two bag sizes: five and ten pounds. The machine uses one forming tube to create both bags, so it is only a matter of changing the bag length and adjusting the fill weight, an almost immediate operation. The machine currently runs 30 bags per minute for the five-pound bags but is capable of up to 120 packages per minute, depending on upstream product flow and bag size. If necessary, the machine can package bag widths ranging from two inches to 15 inches and lengths of three inches to 24 inches.