The Penn Racquet Sports Company of Mullingar, Ireland, have called upon Graham Labelling Systems to supply a shrink sleeving system for a new product launch. Having produced two new balls, the ‘Prestige’ and ‘Pro Penn Marathon’ to add to their range of professional, performance and practice tennis balls, Penn wanted a significant new and upmarket appearance for these but needed to keep the packaging in line with the existing production of 3 and 4 ball tubes. The choices were either metal cans or a variation on their wrap labels.
After research, it was decided to go with full length decorative shrink sleeves which allowed the retention of their basic PET tube but gave the tubes a metal appearance. Following further investigation, Penn Racquet Sports went into development with Grahams to design an automatic sleeve applicator system that could cope with the very long material cut lengths of 205 and 275mm respectively.
Eunan McCormack, Engineering Manager of Penn Racquet Sports, points out that their tubes are difficult to sleeve as they have a wide neck as opposed to bottles having a narrow neck. He adds, “Our Graham VF650 sleeve applicator was designed specifically for our tube and was the result of a very good co-operative approach by Grahams, who involved us at all stages of testing prior to the final building and commissioning of the machine”. Eunan further adds, “Of course, the Grahams representation in Ireland, both technical and sales, was of great importance to us. The resulting machine construction is good and it performs well”.
The Graham VF range can accommodate containers up to 170mm in diameter, requires minimal change parts and can apply sleeves up to 300mm in length. They are suitable for empty and full, square and round profiled containers. With the addition of Graham’s heat tunnels using hot air, radiant heat or steam, the range provides the complete shrink sleeving solution. Recent developments include a material accumulation system, which allows reel changes while the system is in full operation.
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