Case Histories
Thanks to CRYOVAC High Performance Shrink Packaging, the Major Italian Distributor "Central Food" Offers Top Quality and Ensures Sustained Growth
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To guarantee the quality and hygiene of its fresh meat products, in addition to enhancing their presentation on the display shelves, the major Italian supplier "Central Food" opted for high performance shrink packaging from Cryovac. After several years' experience, the choice has proven to be both wise and promising.
Central Food SpA belongs to the major Italian company "Gruppo Pellegrini", a large caterer serving a variety of restaurants, hotels, institutions and other community food services. Central Food serves as the central buyer for Gruppo Pellegrini, managing the purchasing and dispatching of all food and non food products to more than 300 catering centres throughout Italy, including Cash & Carry retailer chains. It also operates as a logistical platform for the distribution of foodstuffs.
Located in Peschiera Borromeo, nearby Milan, in North-western Italy, Central Food was founded 20 years ago. In the past three years, it has achieved an impressive growth of around 50%, totalling an annual turnover of $50 million in 1998, $60 million in 1999 and an estimated $85 million in 2000.
Central Food operates three main plants, respectively in Peschiera Borromeo, Milan and Rome. In Peschiera, the company employs 70 people and uses leading-edge technology to process and pack significant volumes of fresh red meats and pork products. The company handles an average of 5'000 tons of meat annually.
For several years, Central Food had been using nylon and polyester pouches
to pack its fresh meat products in industrial units. Back in 1995, the
company approached Cryovac, the leading food packaging innovator, to help
improve product quality and packaging processes. The company was quick
to adopt two Cryovac shrink bags: the CRYOVAC®
BB4L with improved biaxial shrink and superior heat-seal properties and
CRYOVAC® TBG 905 for bone-in
products requiring optimum protection.
Cryovac vacuum shrink bags are designed to package a large variety of perishable food products in both industrial and consumer units, such as boneless and bone-in meat subprimals as well as cuts of fresh meats. The tough, multilayered bags offer excellent shrink properties, safe seals, high mechanical resistance and good optics. Featuring high barrier properties, they are designed to deliver the ultimate in protection while extending distribution life and maintaining product integrity.
After a number of tests and development phases, Central Food began its widespread use of Cryovac shrink bags to pack its industrial portions of fresh meat. The choice was primarily motivated by the company's desire to better preserve the quality and hygiene of its meat primals. The vacuum shrink technology promised to resolve these issues, particularly by improving presentation and preservation. The new systems satisfied all needs and requirements, by reducing drip losses as well as scraps on the packaging lines, improving presentation on the display shelves and significantly prolonging shelf life.
Following such a positive experience, and in view of the company's strategy to fully enter the Case-Ready business, the company decided to extend its use of Cryovac products. In 1998, Central Food thus adopted the well-known CRYOVAC BDF®
shrink film, designed for the modified atmosphere packaging (MAP) or flow-wrapping of trayed products. This new film was chosen to pack consumer units of high quality and presentation.
The BDF system involves a barrier shrink film for overwrapping trayed meat cuts in attractive packages. It provides a leak-proof, abuse-resistant package of extended shelf life, while offering the traditional backstore presentation. With its sparkling clarity and anti-fog properties, it significantly increases consumer appeal. In addition, its coextruded, multilayer, corrosion-free polyolefin formulation ensures clean, trouble-free performance and maximum seal strength and mechanical resistance. The concept is highly flexible and can be adapted to a number of tray sizes and machines.
This latest introduction also proved to be a complete success. Thanks to the hermetically sealed Cryovac packs, consumer units offer prolonged shelf life and preserved meat quality. According to Central Food management, the future potential of this packaging is unlimited, depending on the extent to which retailers adopt it. To date, the market impact of the new Cryovac packaging has been extremely positive.
According to Central Food management, the benefits of the Cryovac packaging are evident. "Thanks to the BDF system, we are able to provide our customers with high quality meat, offering consistent and reliable organoleptic qualities throughout the distribution cycle", comments Luca Tacchini, Purchasing Division Manager for Central Food, who adds: "This is key to our business". Gabriele Nicotra, General Manager for Central Food, agrees: "Innovation for us is not a novelty, it is our tradition. This is the reason we chose CRYOVAC as our partner".
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