Specialised in the design and marketing of espresso coffee and other drink pods, Milan-based firm Mitaca recently completed, together with Sacmi, an ambitious investment project for the manufacture of pods with improved aesthetics and quality. The result: two installed CCM compression presses and a technology deemed to offer the best productivity and pod quality on the market.
Already a long-standing partner of Illycaffè and specialised in the design and marketing of expresso coffee and other drink pod systems, Milan-based firm Mitaca has, together with Sacmi, now completed an ambitious investment project for the manufacture of pods with improved aesthetics and quality.
A provider of pod systems for offices and large businesses, Mitaca saw Sacmi technology as being the best the market has to offer in terms of process linearity and high productivity; it’s also a system that allows total quality control of every single pod. This soon led to the installation of two Sacmi-developed CCM 32-cavity compression presses at Mitaca, a firm that has, since 2008, helped Illycaffè develop this particular segment both in Italy and on key international markets.
Key advantages enjoyed by Mitaca with respect to traditional alternatives (such as injection) include halved cycle times for the MPS product (3.2 seconds with the supplied CCM32MB solution) and high productivity rates of around 600 pcs/min.
Lighter pods (just 2.15 grams) have been made possible by, among other things, the intrinsic advantages of this technology: plastic extrusion at lower fluidity indexes, at lower temperatures and with accurate, fully independent control of each individual cavity consequently eliminating scrap.
Thanks to movement of the dose in a more viscous state than with injection and accurate monitoring of each cavity via an integrated vision system, the Sacmi machine ensures improved thickness control of the pod bottom, allowing maximum repeatability of “opening performance” over time and guaranteeing the hermetic seal of every single pod. Last but not least, the production process is simpler and repeatable thanks to the absence (with respect to the alternative technology) of the heat chamber. Mitaca, which for some years now has decided to take a more aggressive stance on the drink pod system production market, has drawn further strategic advantages from its partnership with Sacmi, a key one being the ability to develop solutions right from the start by working in close collaboration with the Sacmi Group R&D Center to ensure optimum product quality and design.
