Technical Help in Engineering and Marketing (T.H.E.M.) announced an expansion of its contract packaging capabilities.

T.H.E.M. erected additional humidity-controlled packaging suites at its FDA-approved Marlton, N.J.-based facility to include a total of eight packaging suites that accommodate single lane and up to 24-lane high-speed stick pack production. The expansion can also meet stick volume requirements from 10,000 units up to runs of 100 million packs in powder, liquid and paste formats.

“We’ve seen steadily growing interest by marketers of both liquid food and beverage products in flexible stick packs,” says Tom Martin, new vice president of business development. “We also see significant growth potential for direct-to-mouth energy and nutritional applications in North America.”

The company is working on plans that would virtually double its current liquid stick packaging capacity to accommodate anticipated launch demand. In addition to flexible sticks, T.H.E.M.’s expanded in-house capabilities now include high-speed liquid filling of pouches and packettes with output rates of 250 products per minute per lane. Pouch and packette production includes 3- and 4-sided seal configurations for product capacities ranging from 1 to 70ml.

“Pouch and packette filling significantly broadens the range of formats we can offer customers,” Martin says. “In many ways, this was a very natural evolution for T.H.E.M., and aligns perfectly with our core expertise in single-serve packaging.”

As part of a turn-key solution, T.H.E.M. also manages raw material intake, secondary packaging operations and pack out for distribution.