New AutoWrap Lite system significantly extends shelf life for Bradburys Cheese

New AutoWrap Lite system significantly extends shelf life for Bradburys Cheese

Case Study - Global ‘market first’

About Bradburys

Headquartered in Buxton, UK, Bradburys Cheese has been delivering quality cheese solutions for over 140 years. The business sources from across Europe and supplies a wide range of cheeses, including over 600 different SKUs and speciality cheese to retailers across the UK and internationally.

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Challenge
Solution
Results

Challenge

Bradburys Cheese has become the first-to-market with an innovative new Sealed Air shrink packaging system that’s extended shelf life by over 30% with the potential for further shelf life increases in the future.

The cheese supplier had a core objective of further extending product shelf life to support performance in four key areas:

Driving international growth
Meeting sales demand during peak periods
Improving efficiencies
Supporting its commitment to reducing environmental impact

Extending shelf life would enable Bradburys to create additional days in its supply chain to store, distribute and sell its wide range of cheese products. This would allow the business to boost production outputs and capacity, while streamlining its packaging processes to improve sustainability.

Solution

Sealed Air has worked with Bradburys Cheese for more than a decade and had already set a high benchmark for packaging performance. A collaboration between the two businesses, along with Tesco, Plastic Energy and SABIC, saw Sealed Air’s CRYOVAC^® brand rBDF S10 film win ‘Resource Efficient Pack of the Year’ at the 2021 UK Packaging Awards.

CRYOVAC^® brand rBDF S10 film is made using a minimum of 30% recycled plastic content and features an ultra-thin design that reduces packaging material usage and weight. The innovative solution had extended cheese shelf life to around 40 days and was supporting Bradburys’ commitment to minimising environmental impact. The cheese supplier wanted to strengthen its industry-leading position by further extending shelf life and improving efficiencies.

Achieving Bradburys’ goals required a solution that would optimize the performance of CRYOVAC^® brand rBDF S10 film. After careful consideration, Sealed Air specified its new AutoWrap Lite packaging system.

AutoWrap Lite is a soft vacuum shrink packaging system that gently extracts air during packaging. This delivers a close-fitting vacuum skin, which respects the integrity of soft and hard cheeses. The system minimizes packaging material usage, with approximately two grams of film used per 200 grams of cheese, which helps to reduce total packaging weight by 65%, when compared to other similar thermoformed packaging solutions.

Bradburys’ previous system used a gas flushing technique to extract oxygen during packaging, which required CO₂ and nitrogen, as well as a separate barrier label to seal the flushing hole that was cut into the film. AutoWrap Lite’s vacuum shrink wrapping and sealing process eliminated the need for any gas during packaging.

Removing gas flushing has streamlined the cheese packaging line to increase throughputs, speed and productivity. Production planning has been improved with fewer changeovers and longer production runs. The combined performance of AutoWrap Lite and CRYOVAC^® brand BDFS10 film can also double the shelf life.

Results

Shelf life extended from an average of 40 to 100 days
Eliminated the need for CO₂ and nitrogen during packaging
No sealing labels required, removing one million labels per annum and reducing packaging material usage
Boosted packaging speeds and throughputs, and overall production capacity
Increased capacity to meet peak demand, when sales can spike by 30%

“Sealed Air’s total packaging solution has delivered multiple sustainability and cost-saving benefits. It avoids the usage of flushing gases and has removed the need for around one million labels per annum that were previously used to seal flushing holes” commented Brian OWENS.

He added: “Extending shelf life to an average of 100 days has created an extra 60 days in our supply chain. We now have more time to store and transport cheese, while also providing retailers with even longer periods to sell our products. This has all been achieved while preserving freshness, taste and product quality. It has created new opportunities for boosting capacity and production schedules to stay ahead of peak demand and grow exports to markets around the world.”

Brian OWENS
Operations Director at Bradburys Cheese

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