Ravenwood Packaging has developed a sustainable and cost effective linerless label portfolio to accomodate many label formats in  many different pack shapes and sizes, including ready meals. One format high in demand is Ravenwood’s slideable linerless ready meal sleeve. The sleeve is a reinvention of the traditional, hand-applied cardboard sleeve, but it comes supplied on a roll.

This type of label offers the benefits of a standard linerless label. These sleeves provide a more sustainable alternative when compared to their hand-applied counterparts. Traditional sleeves are both costly and labor intensive due to the need for manual application. Multiple people, depending on line speed, can be involved in the labeling of one product on a production line.

Ravenwood’s Nobac 500R machine has been specially developed and tailored inline with applying these labels to ready meal packs. The applicator has all the benefits relating to the recyclability and cost savings, inline with all machines in the Nobac 500 machine range. The company’s applicators come in at 1,400mm length with a cruising speed of 65ppm and the ability to run labels at 500mm in length, between 120mm and 250mm in width.

With Ravenwood sleeves, printers need one reel of sleeves and one machine, operated by one person. And also worth considering are the space savings and how the labels are actually supplied. With Ravenwood’s ready meal sleeve, printers can get up to 2,000 labels on a roll (depending on the width of sleeve) compared to 500 hand sleeves flat packed in a box.

Sell-by dates can also be applied at the point of application, whereas with manual application, these would need adding separately. The whole process is streamlined, saving on time, cost, and overall, a much reduced carbon footprint.

And as with all Ravenwood 500 machines, the company can add printers of your choice. For wider sleeves, it supplies the Viper Inkjet from Videojet. The Viper machine has been specifically developed for this purpose, for creating ready meal sleeves on heavier card. As well as ready meal sleeves, the Nobac 500R has also been modified to work with flat salmon packs and can be adjusted to meet individual pack specifications and produce; c wrap, d wrap, full wrap, top and side. And if required, infeed base labellers and flash labellers can be added.

Ready meals have a long history – in fact, the first TV dinner launched in the 1950s. Statistically, the market is expected to grow annually by 4.3% (CAGR 2019-2023). Revenue in the ready meals segment amounts to £177,222m in 2019.