GB2228912A

GB2228912A - Improvements relating to the packaging and marketing of tea bags

Info

Publication number: GB2228912A
Application number: GB8914372A
Authority: GB
Inventors: Stephen Charles Aston
Original assignee: Premier Brands UK Ltd
Current assignee: Premier Brands UK Ltd
Priority date: 1989-03-09
Filing date: 1989-06-22
Publication date: 1990-09-12
Anticipated expiration: 2009-06-22
Also published as: GB8914372D0; AU2994892A; AU634967B2; CA2001353A1; CA2001353C; ZA895108B; AU3798189A; NZ229747A; GB2228912B; GB8905363D0

Abstract

A sealed package comprises at least one, and preferably two stacks of similarly sized tea bags enwrapped in a metal foil sleeve end-sealed by means of seals lying transverse to the length direction of the sleeve. The tea bags are rectangular and lie with their length direction at right angles to the length direction of the sleeve. The sleeve is a neat fit around the tea bags to maintain the integrity of the stacks when the stacks are handled. The foil sleeve maintains the freshness of the tea. The stacks may each contain twenty tea bags. A family of cartons are sized to receive one, two, three and four of said packages. A method of and apparatus for producing the packages includes forming the bags and stacking them, feeding the stack along a channel 46 to a wrapping machine in which a web is entubed about the stacks and transversely sealed to form discrete packages. The packages may be flushed with nitrogen or an aroma producing gas prior to final sealing. <IMAGE>

Description

Improvements Relating to the Packaging and Marketing of Tea Bags This invention relates to the packaging and marketing of tea bags, being bags which are rectilinear in nature, and normally will be rectangular, but could be square and which are of a material permitting the passage through the bag of a liquid to permit the infusion of tea from tea leaves contained in the bag into the liquid to provide a beverage, specifically tea. In fact, it is possible that the contents of the bag although provided for a beverage may in fact not be tea, but clearly the major application of this invention is in relation to bags containing tea so much so that only the expression "tea bags" will be used hereinafter.

Also, as has been mentioned above, the tea bags are mainly rectangular having a length and a width, and reference is made hereinafter only to rectangular tea bags and to the length and width thereof, but it is to be mentioned that the invention can also cover tea bags which are square, and therefore the specification must be read with this in mind and must be construed such that when reference is made to length and width, where a square tea bag is involved, and the length and width will be the same.

The manufacture of tea bags involves the use of high speed machinery, and in one machine, the tea bags are manufactured by horizontally feeding a web of the tea bag material, usually paper, on which are deposited portions of tea. After the tea portions are so deposited, a second web is applied over the first web and the webs are sealed together by suitable means such as crimping and/or adhesive to form webs of the bags. The sealed webs eventually are cut longitudinally and transversely in order to define individual tea bags which are stacked and at this stage it is usual for the stacks to be loaded into cartons to provide cartons full of tea bags for transportation and sale to the end users.

Such tea bags are produced at high speed, in the order of fifteen hundred to two thousand five hundred bags per minute, and handling is therefore a considerable dynamics problem.

In the majority of production, when the webs are sealed together they define two parallel rows of tea bags, and the rows are cut transversely to provide tea bag pairs being individual tea bags joined together along a line which is usually perforated to enable the bags readily to be separated but by and large the bags are packaged in pairs and eventually arrive with the customer in pairs.

More recently, proposals have been made as outlined in British Patent No. 2156766 for severing the pairs of bags to produce individual bags, and the present invention in its main aspect is concerned with the packaging of stacks of individual tea bags or "singles" as they are referred to.

When reference is made hereinafter to a stack of tea bags, it is intended to mean a stack of singles tea bags.

As is known, tea bags have been commercially available for a large number of years and the popularity of this method of preparing tea is ever increasing. There is a demand for new forms of packaging of the tea bags which will enhance the presentation and/or maintain the freshness of the tea despite the fact that the bags may not be used for some considerable time after purchase. The present invention in its approach seeks to achieve these objectives.

In accordance with a first aspect of this invention there is provided a package comprising a single stack of similar sized tea bags or several stacks of similar sized tea bags arranged in the same attitude in a single row and contained in a sealed sleeve of flexible material, and wherein the sleeve acts to maintain the integrity of the stack or stacks until the package is opened.

Preferably, the overall width of the package is substantiallay equal to the overall length of the tea bags in the or each stack.

Preferably also, the sleeve is sealed at the ends by seals which lie transverse to the length direction of the sleeve.

It is also preferred that the tea bags of the or each stack lie with the length direction at right angles to the length direction of the sleeve.

By so arranging the tea bags to be packaged in this way, a considerable stream of advantages result.

Firstly, the tea bags can be packaged by a flow sealing machine which comprises a machine in which is contained a web of a film or foil to form the sleeve, and which is wrapped around the stack or stacks of tea bags and sealed longitudinally followed by the formation of the transverse end seal forming a neat and handleable package. If the web is a metalised foil, then the resulting sleeve can form an excellent hermetic seal surrounding the tea bags thereby maintaining the freshness of same. The tea bag stacks can be formed into sealed packages which are modular in nature. That is to say if each package contains a fixed number say forty tea bags (two stacks of twenty each), then by using multiples of the package, the bags can be readily placed in larger carton containers so as to be sold as forty, eighty, one hundred and twenty and so on.

The presentation of the packaging of tea bags is much improved especially where the sealing sleeve is a metallic foil because as such it provides the consumer with the confidence that the tea bags will be kept in dry and in excellent conditions.

It is preferred that the tea bags are arranged such that the length direction is transverse of the sleeve. By adopting this configuration, the linking of a sealing machine to the tea bag manufacturing machine is much improved, because in the tea bag manufacturing machine, the resulting stacks of tea bags are arranged in pairs having been fed into the magazine in a direction which is the direction of travel of the two webs before severing, and so that the length direction of the tea bags lies in said direction, but the pair of stacks of tea bags in the magazine is pushed out of the magazine in a direction at right angles to the height of the stacks and at right angles to said direction so that the pairs of stacks can be fed directly into a feed channel leading to the sealing machine, the stacks lying one behind another in the feed channel, and the- stacks in this disposition can be fed directly into the sealing machine.

The sealed packages, because the sleeve is of no greater width than the length of the single stack of tea bags, can be readily handled and is of a size to be received neatly in an average size hand; handling will not destroy the integrity of the tea bag stacks.

The invention provides a significant departure in the marketing and packaging of tea bags.

The present invention also provides a method for the wrapping of the tea bags in said sleeve by feeding same from the high speed tea making machine into a feed channel lying at right angles to the direction which the webs forming the tea bags are fed through the tea bag making machine, the feed channel leading to a sealing machine, and including means for maintaining the stacks or pairs of stacks of tea bags in pitched disposition.

The sealed packages are preferably placed in carton containers, and in accordance with the invention there is also provided tea bags contained in sealed sleeves and received in carton containers.

The applicants furthermore reserve the right to make any claim to any feature or method step or combination of features or method steps as disclosed in the specific embodiment of the invention now to be described by way of example with reference to the accompanying drawings, wherein Fig. 1 is a perspective view illustrating diagrammatically a method for producing packages in accordance with the preferred embodiment of the invention; Fig. 2 is a perspective view of one of the packages produced by the method according to Fig. 1; Fig. 3 is a perspective view illustrating the package of Fig.

2 when contained in a cardboard container; and Fig. 4 shows a cardboard container holding two of the packages shown in Fig. 2 in side by side relationship.

In Fig. 1, the elements of a high speed tea bag manufacturing machine are illustrated. Machines operating on this principle operate at high speed and produce tea bags up to the rate of 1500 - 2500 bags per minute. As shown in Fig. 1 a first roll 10 of the tea bag material (tissue paper) is fed as indicated by arrow 12 in a feed direction. As the web 10 is fed continuously, dispensers 14 dispense portions of tea 16 onto the moving web 10. Downstream, a second web 18 located above web 10 is fed initially downwardly as shown by arrow 20, and round a guide roller 22 so that the webs 18 and 10 overlap in register as shown at 24. The roller 22 is also designed to effect sealing of the webs 10 and 18 together as shown at 26 and 28 to define the individual bags.

Alternatively, other forms of sealing may be provided. The connection may simply be established by crimping the two webs together.

Downstream of roller 22 by a means not shown, the webs are initially transversely severed as indicated by reference 30, and subsequently are longitudinally severed as indicated by reference 32. The severing may take place in the reverse order if required, but in any case pairs of individual tea bags result as indicated by reference 34. The pairs of tea bags 34 are displaced vertically downwards as indicated by arrow 36 so as to form two stacks 38, 40 which, when the appropriate number of tea bags is in each stack, are pushed by means of an automatic pusher 42 operating as indicated by arrow 44 in order to feed the pairs of stacks into an appropriately dimensioned feed channel 46 which preferably is provided with pitching and conveying means (not shown) to keep the pairs of stacks regularly pitched and for feeding the stacks along the channel 46.

The pairs of stacks are fed to a flow sealing machine 48 which carries a roll 50 of the foil in which the pairs of stacks are to be wrapped to provide hermetically sealed packages 52 as shown in Fig. 1. Reference numerals 54 and 56 illustrate diagrammatically sealing jaws for forming a longitudinal seal in the material 50 as it is wrapped round the pairs of stacks, and subsequent to such sealing transverse seals 58 are formed in the resulting sleeve to provide the packages 52 which are fed from the sealer into suitable marshalling equiping (not shown) as indicated by the arrow 60. It is to be noticed that the feed of the pairs of stacks as indicated by arrow 60 is in a direction at right angles to the original feed direction 12 of the two webs 10 and 18.

The packaging of tea bags in the manner described provides a novel package which is shown in greater detail in Fig. 2.

The surrounding foil 50 is shown in chain dotted lines, and the two stacks 38 and 40 are shown in full lines. The foil 50 is a neat encapsulation for the stacks 38 and 40, and the width of the foil package is substantially the same as the length direction L of the tea bags, and the length of the package is substantially equal to twice the breadth B of each tea bag. This constitutes a novel method of packaging tea bags and provides a neat handleable package which is appealing to the consumer. Furthermore, by sealing the tea bags in the foil, if the foil is impermeable and the seals 58 as well as the longitudinal seal are hermetic, then ingress of moisture or other atmospheric contaminents is prevented until the package is opened.

The invention provides that the stacks of tea bags arranged in pairs form in effect a block which defines a sufficiently solid mass to enable the foil to be wrapped therearound, thereby overcoming handling problems which may be experienced if tea bags were simply placed loosely into a foil sleeve and the ends simply transversely sealed.

The package continues to maintain its geometric shape by virtue of the close wrapping of the foil to the tea bags, and as shown in Figs. 3 and 4, a single package 52 can have a cardboard container suitably designed to the size of the package 52 so as to neatly receive a single package. The container is illustrated in Fig. 3 by reference 62.

Container 64 shown in Fig. 4 is again a cardboard box construction and is designed so as to receive two of said packages 52. The marketing presentation is enhanced by the maintenance of the geometric configuration defined by the stacks of tea bags and the neat foil wrapping.

The foil material may be any suitable and may for example be metalised plastics material, or a clear plastics film could be used. The invention extends to the wrapping of a single stack of tea bag and also to the wrapping of stacks of tea bags of varying height and varying numbers of stacks.

The invention also provides as a concept the provision of an assembly comprising an outer container geometrically dimensioned to receive a single package 52 or a container designed to receive a plurality of such packages.

The invention furthermore provides a method of producing the packages such as 52 in which stacks of tea bags from the machine are inserted into a channel guide which lies in a direction at right angles to the feed of the bags through the manufacturing machine so that the length direction of the tea bags lies at right angles to the channel and the tea bags are neatly received in the channel width, the channel leading to a flow sealing apparatus. The method and the resulting products provide a considerably enhanced handling arrangement and market presentation for tea bags which has not been adopted in the past.

It is possible in the flow sealing apparatus to gas flush (nitrogen or the like) the interior of the package 52 before final sealing of same to displace moisture and/or to introduce an aroma into the package so that when the package is opened by the consumer a pleasant aroma will issue from the package.

The cartons 62 and 64 or any other carton used for holding the packages 52 may be of any suitable design.

By wrapping the tea bags in a hermetically sealed foil, the freshness of the tea is maintained until the foil of the package is broken open.

A typical tea bag may be dimensioned 80 ml length and 65 ml breadth, but the invention is not to be considered as being limited to tea bags of such size.

In the development of the concept of the present invention, it is possible to market the packages 52 direct to the consumer without using a box carton 62 or 64, because as mentioned herein by so wrapping the stacks of tea bags, the integrity and shape of the package is maintained by the interaction of the foil and the geometry of the stacks of tea bags.

Another advantage of packaging tea bags in the packages 52 is that the packages 52 again because of their geometric integrity can be marshalled and handled so as to be inserted singly into containers, or to be grouped in twos or threes, fours or eights or any another number and inserted into appropriately sized containers so that the manufacture has the capability of producing containers of one, two, three or four more packages.

A further advantage of foil wrapping the stacks of tea bags as described is that loose tea which may pass through the perforations of the tea bag material will not fall onto the factory floor but will be retained in the foil wrappings.

Claims

1. A package comprising a single stack of similar sized tea bags or several stacks of similar sized tea bags arranged in the same attitude in a single row and contained in a sealed sleeve of flexible material, and wherein the sleeve acts to maintain the integrity of the stack or stacks until the package is opened.

2. A package according to Claim 1, wherein the overall width of the package is substantiallay equal to the overall length of the tea bags in the or each stack.

3. A package according to Claim 1 or 2, the sleeve is sealed at the ends by seals which lie transverse to the length direction of the sleeve.

4. A package according to any one of the preceding claims, wherein the tea bags of the or each stack lie with the length direction at right angles to the length direction of the sleeve.

5. A package according to any preceding claim wherein there are two stacks, each of twenty tea bags, in the sealed sleeve.

6. A package according to any preceding claim, wherein the interior of the sleeve is flushed with an inert gas such as nitrogen.

7. A package according to any one of the preceding claims, wherein the sleeve comprises a flexible web formed into sleeve form and sealed longitudinally.

8. A package according to any preceding claim, wherein the flexible material of the sealed sleeve comprises a metallic foil.

9. A package comprising a stack or stacks of tea bags substantially as hereinbefore described with reference to the accompanying drawings.

10. A container comprising a cardboard box having an interior of a volume designed to receive one or a multiple of the packages according to any preceding claim and containing said package or packages.

11. A method of producing packages according to any of Claims 1 to 9, comprising feeding at regular intervals stacks of similar sized tea bags either as single stacks or as groups of parallel stacks arranged in a single row from a high speed tea bag making machine into a feed channel leading to a wrapping machine which applies and seals the sleeve, said channel being sized neatly to receive the tea bag stacks to maintain the integrity of the stacks until they are wrapped with the flexible material to form said packages.

12. A method of producing packages according to Claim 11, and substantially as hereinbefore described with reference to the accompanying drawings.

13. Apparatus for producing packages according to any of Claims 1 to 9, comprising: a) a high speed tea bag making machine which produces tea bags arranged in stacks, b) a channel into and along which the stacks are fed at regular intervals either as single stacks or groups of stacks, each group arranged with the stacks parallel and in a single row, said channel being sized to receive the stacks neatly to maintain the integrity of same; and c) a wrapping and sealing machine for applying the sleeve to said stacks and for sealing the sleeves to produce packages, said sealing machine being located to receive stacks discharged from said channel.

14. Apparatus according to Claim 13, wherein the high speed tea bag making machine forms the stacks by feeding tea bags in a first horizontal direction and downwardly displacing same, and the stacks are displaced into the channel in a horizontal direction at right angles to said first horizontal direction.

15. Apparatus according to Claim 13 or 14, wherein in the base of the channel is a conveying means having spacing means for conveying the stacks or groups in stacks at regular spaced intervals from the tea bag making machine to the wrapping and sealing machine.

16. Aparatus for producing packages according to any of Claims 1 to 9, substantially as hereinbefore described with reference to the accompanying drawings.