Meat Packing with 70% less packaging and no styrofoam / Lee Benton / Formost Fuji

https://www.formostfuji.com/
How can we eliminate polystyrene from meat trays? 
Can automation make us more sustainable? 
How can we reduce the materials needed to package food? 

https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/packaging-today-show/id1656906367

Join Us Live Daily on LinkedIn Or YouTube or listen at your leisure on Apple or Spotify 

Packaging Today Podcast 

https://open.spotify.com/show/6dksVwqEFVDWdggd27fyFF?si=e924995740f94e19

https://www.linkedin.com/in/cory-connors/

I'm here to help you make your packaging more sustainable! Reach out today and I'll get back to you asap.

This podcast is an independent production and the podcast production is an original work of the author. All rights of ownership and reproduction are retained—copyright 2022.

Transcript

Cory Connors: 0:15

Welcome to Sustainable Packaging with Cory Connors. Today's guest is Mr. Lee Benton from Formost Fuji. How are you, Lee? I'm good. How are you? Good man. I'm excited to have you on the show. Can you tell us a little bit about your background and how you got into world of, sustainable packaging?

Lee Benton: 0:32

Yeah, absolutely. I appreciate you having me on. So, my background is, My pro professional background, I started out in operations and went through, packaging areas in the company I worked for a while ago. And, and, it, and I eventually worked through my, wore my way through, My career into sales, and now I'm with foremost Fuji. We manufacture horizontal flow wrappers and, baggers. Yep. And, and I've got, I got interested in sustainable packaging years ago. But I've always personally been interested in sustainable packaging, mainly through waste reduction and decom compostable or recyclable material. Mainly because of the amount of waste that we see in our environment and how it affects and how it affects our wildlife. Very true. Very true. Yeah. There's just, there's too much of it. So that's kind of how I got involved with it, and I've had the opportunity with foremost Fuji to, to present a solution to reduction, to reducing waste, and, In Aless ground meat system, so Wow. Yeah. Yeah. So we've developed a system and we, it is been implemented in Europe for about six years. It's been running in SI for about six or seven years. It's been really big for us over there, mainly in Germany and the EU area. And part of that has been driven by the regulations, the EU or Germany. Particularly because they tax manufacturers on how much packaging materials in their product. Right. So it was a big driver for them financially and, ecologically it was just better for everybody to go to it, get rid of the styrofoam,

Cory Connors: 2:29

basically. It's a big issue in the meat industry. Yeah. And we talked about in Before we started about protein sales and that's something that we talk about quite a bit in the industry is the meat tray and how are we gonna replace the meat tray? How are we gonna get rid of that styrofoam tray? Yeah, because not only is it styrofoam, it's. Got something glued to it that's not styrofoam, that's usually cellulose or something like that. And then that then gets wrapped again in another piece of plastic. It sounds like you've eliminated two items out of that trifecta. Well, really free. Oh, really? Okay.

Lee Benton: 3:12

Yeah, because the trays are packed in a master. Oh yeah,

Cory Connors: 3:17

there you go. Very good. So you've eliminated the tray, the master pack, the cellulose pad, which is also packed in a master pack. So four items, I guess. Yeah. And imagine the tons of material that you're eliminating from the landfill with this design. Yeah. Incredible. Well, that,

Lee Benton: 3:35

that and the, I mean, all the greenhouse submissions that you're cutting out by reducing the amount of trucks that are on the road Yeah. Just to get the materials to the plant. And that's compounded with the space savings of our product. You can fit three times as much products on a truck than they currently can.

Cory Connors: 4:00

Because steaks really don't need a cushion. Right. That's, I mean, it's, we're gonna, we're gonna chew'em up when we eat 'em. Right? Yeah. I never understood the need for the tray other than stability and appearance maybe. Is that the idea? I guess

Lee Benton: 4:18

so. There's certain products like chicken. For one, I mean, some chicken as you, I'm sure is packaged and thermoformers with thermo form package, which is also a good option, but it's more costly than our option. But as for like ground beef in a tray, I mean, usually people that are buying that are buying it for that night. Right. Hopefully, because typically it's not gonna last, you know that long, right? It's like three or four days. It's not sealed. It's not sealed. Yeah. It's just once you break open the master pack, the, the shelf life goes to nothing. The master pack is the portion that has the shelf life. So at, from a grocery store angle. They could potentially save wasted product, just by going to our package. So basically our package has the same shelf life as a master pack, but they're individually packed. Wow. And that's fresh. I mean, obviously frozen, they'll continue to last for five months or whatever. Sure. But

Cory Connors: 5:35

Give us an example of the kinds of products that would go into your trail list package.

Lee Benton: 5:41

Well, it would mainly be ground, ground meat, like ground beef, ground pork. But you could also do steaks, hamburger pat's. Yeah. And we have a variable pitch system on our, we could, we have the ability for variable pitch on our wrappers to cut off at different links. So like if one steak. 12 inches long and the next one's 14 inches long. It'll automatically cut'em different links.

Cory Connors: 6:13

Excellent. And talk about maximizing material and like you said at the beginning, eliminating waste. Well done. Yeah. Yeah.

Lee Benton: 6:22

So yeah, it's over overall a better solution. And hopefully one day our, the technology will be there to have a type of film that we could recycle in our. That, that's one of the big goals of a lot of people that I've talked to, in Europe, that the film that they use is recyclable in their system. But do

Cory Connors: 6:48

you know what that material is? It's, is it low density polyethylene?

Lee Benton: 6:55

I'm not sure off the top of my head, but I think so. I could get that to you. Yeah. But, Yeah, so they, that's part of their system. But one thing that they don't use is a Soaker pad. They use paper, and that's what we're using right now with our, with the product that's in the market. My customer's using paper. They're looking at using a Soaker pad just because of the US consumer. So doesn't typically like to see a bunch of blood in their bag. Yeah. And it's not necessarily blood, it's just moisture, it's water. Right. Right. And that ha that

Cory Connors: 7:33

typically happens, right? Yeah.

Lee Benton: 7:35

Yeah. And that typically happens with more, lean, cuts. So like, like the, like a 93% lie product is gonna have more purge than an 80. Oh,

Cory Connors: 7:48

interesting. The fat keeps in the moisture. Yeah.

Lee Benton: 7:51

Yep. Fascinating. And, and it's gonna, it'll be the same thing with, pork, with chicken. I'm not sure. We haven't done any tests, in the US on chicken, on ground chicken, our whole chicken, but there's so much water in chicken, especially chicken breast, and there's no fat. Yeah. I'm afraid I would be afraid that it would just. A bag of water, it would look a little unappetizing. But yeah. So we're kind of just focused on, pork and beef at the current moment, unless we could find a

Cory Connors: 8:24

solution. Have you had success in the, industrial, food areas, like with restaurants and, like, other kinds of heavy, large service kitchen?

Lee Benton: 8:38

So like a large pack of ground beef or something? Yeah. Not yet. I don't, I'm not, I can't really speak to Germany on what they're doing in regards to that, but as for us, our rapper we're on the, we're on the supplier, on the equipment supplier side, so we're mainly focused to talking to the processors. Just like a lot of industries, the, the protein business is kind of a, I look at it, I look at it as a three-tiered system. Okay. You have the processors, you have the grocers, and then you have the consumers. Everything is kind of driven by the consumers in the us Yeah. So, and the grocers aren't gonna sell anything. The, consumers aren't gonna buy and then the processors aren't gonna make anything then the approach.

Cory Connors: 9:34

Yeah. Do you have any, maybe any kind of data or something like that, that we could share about the amount of trays, amount of meat trays in the industry or something like that we could kind of hang our

Lee Benton: 9:47

hat on? Man, I wish I did. I've been looking for that information really some time now. Yeah. Because. That would, yeah, that would be very helpful for

Cory Connors: 9:58

me if we could figure out, just think about how many, like you said, how many trucks need eliminate How many, yeah. Pounds of styrofoam. How many, cuz that's probably not getting recycled cuz it's covered in meat juice. It's got the cellulose pad glued to it. It's not very circular. And yeah, it's what we're used to, but why can't we replace it with this? This is such a good alternative. I'm excited about it.

Lee Benton: 10:29

Yeah. Yeah. We are too. And we're, we've been trying to, or we have been, expressing to the market and to the industry. All the benefits from the processor side, but also from all the way down to the consumers. Grocer, everybody has. Everybody can see benefits from this. And, I'm not exactly sure why the tide hasn't turned as fast as we thought it would. But we do see it turning good. There's a lot of people, a lot of companies that are strongly looking at new options Yes. In regards to sustainability. And this is an awesome option. It's a lower cost option than. Say a thermoformer, the materials are less ex less expensive. There is less material in the package.

Cory Connors: 11:27

Do you know that percentage or anything? Like what's the re reduction in material?

Lee Benton: 11:34

Reduction in material from a trade product to a trauss is about 70% of overall saving. Because you're saving on the, you're saving on the master pack, you're saving on the case size that it's all packed in. Amazing. So you can, you scale down the box to fit more product of a tray list package, and then you can fit a trailer. Like the boxers are smaller, but they're fitting in the product.

Cory Connors: 12:05

Well, when I think about something like we talked about, What about a cruise ship? They have such limited space on the ship to Yeah. To store food. What about a restaurant, such limited space to store the food? Yeah. This is, this has so much potential. I'm really impressed with it. Any other things that it could be used for?

Lee Benton: 12:32

Yeah, I mean, Well, we've looked at doing it with, I mean on the protein side, with different types of whole muscle and and, mainly just ground meats at this point. Yeah.

Cory Connors: 12:50

There's ground Turkey and there's other things like that. Ground Turkey. Yeah. Yeah.

Lee Benton: 12:53

Yeah. But again, it's like chicken. There's a lot of moisture. Not much fat, so. I, we haven't done enough testing in regards to poultry to see how it would affect it, but, I think there's opportunity there.

Cory Connors: 13:14

Definitely. Yeah. So your company, provides the equipment and the film to, to perform this or

Lee Benton: 13:22

No? We just do the, we just make, manufacture the equipment to. The ground meat. We have partners in the industry that, that help us with the film. And we've, we worked with, WinPAC on developing this structure. And the structure is, what is it? It's a poly polypro or polypropylene. Film, and it's a barrier film. It has an anti fog in it. And, but the ceiling capabilities on it are incredible. And that's partly due to, I mean, it's a combination between our wrapper and our capabilities with our sealers, but also the film, sounds and yeah, and I mean, we're seeing 24 days of fresh shelf.

Cory Connors: 14:22

Wow. Wow. Yeah. That's, and that's another thing about sustainable packaging, if it if it can increase shelf life, this is something we're adding into the equation. Yeah. There's nothing sustainable about rotten food. We al we always say like, this is such an important part. And like you said earlier, you don't, you're not gonna use it right away. You throw it in the freezer for five, six months, it's no big deal. You get to

Lee Benton: 14:46

that 24 days and you're like, all right, I'm not gonna eat it yet.

Cory Connors: 14:50

So you start it in the freezer. Right. Good to go. Barbecue canceled. Yeah. Right. Yeah. Yeah. Well, this is really cool. Very exciting. Anything that, that I didn't ask you, you wish I would've?

Lee Benton: 15:01

Yeah. I mean, not really, but I would like to kind of. Our goal with our Tailless meat system. Yeah, let's talk about goals. Yeah. Yeah. So our goal with this, with the ground protein system is to give processors, grocers, and consumers the best quality package for FR for product freshness, best pot possible fresh shelf life production, and waste and reduced space. Each segment of this hierarchy. Has its own personal benefits from our trailers package, but they all contribute to a cleaner, healthier world by reducing waste and greenhouse emissions. So that's kind of our mission statement when we're approaching this industry, right. And this segment of our business. We're trying, we're we are leading the way and introducing this to the US market. Not just the US but the America's market. Right. Because there's a lot of people in, a lot of companies in Canada that are interested in it. So there's just

Cory Connors: 16:14

ranches all over the place. Need it.

Lee Benton: 16:15

Yeah. Yeah. Absolutely. And there's so much opportunity with it for the processors and the, all the way down to the consumers. I mean, for the processors alone, it could save them. Three machines on their line. Wow. Three less machines. Think of all that maintenance, all those parts all the time. And the space that it takes them to work on everything.

Cory Connors: 16:42

When you say three less machines, what are those machines? Are they the trade Well, you Yeah,

Lee Benton: 16:48

the trade. Yeah. The trade setter. Trade placer. The over wrap master pack. That's excellent. Yeah. So you take two of those out and you have, all you need is one.

Cory Connors: 17:03

Yeah. Wow. That's a huge reduction, like you said, in maintenance and in cost and labor. Space and energy. And

Lee Benton: 17:10

energy costs and Yeah. Yeah. Labor. Yeah.

Cory Connors: 17:14

Well, I think you got something here. I'm excited for you and, thank you. I appreciate it. You should hope you consider, to use Aurora as one of your distributors for this. We'd absolutely love to help with that. And, yeah, thanks again, Lee. Really

Lee Benton: 17:27

appreciate your time. Yeah, no, I appreciate your, the opportunity to speak

Cory Connors: 17:31

to you about this. Thank you, sir. Yep, thanks. You're listening. Make sure you subscribe so you don't miss the next episode. And stay tuned for more.