EasyPak LLC – Downgauging the Amount of Thermoformed Plastic Used for Food Packaging

Overview

EasyPak is a leading provider of thermoformed packaging solutions that are used for a variety of applications. With its headquarters located in Leominster, Massachusetts, and its main manufacturing plant located in Reading, Pennsylvania, EasyPak provides its customers with high performing plastic packaging products that are used among members of the food, consumer, medical, and industrial fields. With the push to make products more sustainable and affordable, our task was to reduce the amount of material needed to manufacture four of their current appetizer packaging trays while maintaining the same amount of structural rigidity.

Objectives

The objectives of this project were to design and create prototypes for the following products sold by EasyPak:

– A wrap clamshell container (model #39250) with 7.84” L x 7.53” W x 1.68” H cavity dimensions that had a gauge thickness smaller than 0.0175”, as low as .0125” (28.6% decrease in material usage), that satisfied functional requirements.

Approach

– Visit EasyPak manufacturing site to observe and learn how all products are made.

– Participate in weekly meetings with the project advisor and sponsor to discuss progress and receive feedback.

– Assign each member the responsibility of creating a new design for a specific container.

Outcomes

– After working with EasyPak to create molds and prototypes for each design, the new design for the wrap clamshell container has a gauge thickness of .0125” and the snack clamshell design now has a gauge thickness of .015”.

– However, we are confident with future iterations of our current design, EasyPak will be able to meet their need of reducing the thickness for their snack clamshell.