Pack Frozen Fitness Meals with ENTERLINE Tray Sealing
Starting a fitness-meal, meal-prep or frozen ready-meal business involves more than producing good food.
The finished meal also needs packaging that looks professional, survives freezing, can be reheated conveniently and gives you enough space to present your brand, nutritional information and cooking instructions properly.
For businesses packing individual prepared meals, one of the most practical formats is a black polypropylene tray sealed with clear lidding film, finished with a printed label or branded band.
MIPAQ’s ENTERLINE tray sealing system provides the tray, sealing film, heater set and machine needed to create the sealed food package. The branding can then be added separately using a printed band or label produced specifically for your product.
What Packaging Do You Need for a Frozen Meal-Prep Business?
A professional frozen fitness meal can be relatively simple.
You need a suitable food-grade tray for the meal, clear film heat-sealed to the rim, and branding on the finished pack.
The ENTERLINE system is designed around those first two requirements.
ENTERLINE polypropylene trays are suitable for frozen and microwaveable prepared foods, with black and clear trays available in different sizes and formats. MIPAQ’s approved range includes both single-compartment and divided trays.
The trays are then sealed with matching ENTERCLEAR easy-peel lidding film using an ENTERLINE tray sealing machine.
This creates the familiar ready-meal package most consumers already recognise: the food is visible through the film, the tray is neatly sealed around its rim, and the customer peels the film away when the meal is ready to be reheated.
Single or Divided Trays for Fitness Meals?
This is one of the first decisions worth making.
A single-compartment tray works particularly well for meals where the ingredients are intended to sit together — curries, pasta dishes, lasagne, stews, casseroles and similar prepared meals.
For many fitness and portion-controlled meals, however, a two- or three-compartment tray can be very attractive.
It allows the producer to keep components such as chicken, rice and vegetables separate and gives the finished meal a more structured presentation.
The ENTERLINE 197 × 150mm tray family is particularly useful here because MIPAQ offers several trays around the same basic footprint, including:
- single-compartment black trays
- two-compartment trays
- three-compartment trays
- different tray depths for different portion requirements
For example, the range includes the PSW19154B 197 × 150 × 40mm black tray, the deeper PSW191550B 197 × 150 × 50mm tray, and divided trays in the same general format.
That gives a meal-prep producer some flexibility without necessarily changing the entire packaging concept every time a new meal is introduced.
How Are the Trays Sealed?
This is where ENTERLINE differs from simply buying takeaway containers and lids.
Each tray family works with a corresponding heater set, which is profiled to the shape of the tray.
The heater set holds the tray in position, seals the lidding film around the rim and cuts the excess film neatly around the outside of the tray. Changing to another tray footprint requires the corresponding heater set.
The result is a much more purpose-built ready-meal package than simply putting a loose lid onto a container.
For the popular 197 × 150mm ready-meal trays, the ENTERLINE system uses the EHS19151S heater set together with the appropriate lidding film.
For the smaller 120 × 180mm trays, the EHS12181S heater set is used.
Choosing the Tray Sealing Machine
The right machine depends mainly on the tray size and the number of meals you intend to pack.
For smaller ENTERLINE trays, MIPAQ offers the EHM200 manual machine and EHQ200N2 automatic-drawer tray sealer.
For medium and larger ready-meal trays, including the popular 197 × 150mm range, there are the EHM350 manual machine and EHQ350N2 automatic-drawer machine. The EHQ350N2 is specifically intended for medium-to-larger convenience-meal and portion-packing applications.
The manual machines can be a sensible starting point for smaller operations.
As production volumes increase, the EHQ automatic-drawer machines make the sealing operation quicker and easier for repetitive production.
For example, MIPAQ recently assessed a new ready-meal operation expecting production of more than 1,000 meals per day and recommended basing the system around the EHQ350N2 and larger ready-meal tray range.
That does not mean every meal-prep business needs the larger machine. The appropriate system should be selected according to the actual tray, portion size and expected daily production.
The Lidding Film Is Part of the System
The film should not be treated as an afterthought.
ENTERLINE’s ENTERCLEAR films are made specifically to work with the corresponding PP trays and sealing equipment.
The standard easy-peel films supplied by MIPAQ include an anti-fog feature and are available in widths matched to the different ENTERLINE machine and tray families. The 150mm ECPA312150 film is used with the smaller EHM200/EHQ200N2 system, while the 230mm ECPA312230 and 270mm ECPA312270 films are used with EHM350/EHQ350N2 applications.
Using the trays, heater set, film and machine as a matched system removes much of the uncertainty involved in trying to source four unrelated packaging components and hoping they work together.
Turning the Sealed Tray Into a Branded Fitness Meal
Once the functional package is sorted out, the next step is presentation.
The clear lidding film does not need to carry all of your branding.
A very attractive option for a fitness-meal business is a printed board or film band around the completed tray.
That band can carry your:
brand name and meal description, nutritional information or macros, ingredients, barcode, heating instructions and other required product information.
It also leaves a large portion of the transparent lidding film visible so that the customer can still see the food.
MIPAQ can help customers establish the tray-sealing package, and where required we can refer them to specialist South African label and print manufacturers to develop the branding around it.
That means a new meal-prep business does not have to find one supplier capable of manufacturing every part of the package.
The functional food packaging and the printed branding can each be sourced from companies specialising in those areas.
A Complete Package for Frozen Fitness Meals
For many fitness-meal and frozen ready-meal businesses, the finished package can therefore be built around four components:
ENTERLINE PP tray + ENTERCLEAR lidding film + ENTERLINE heater set and tray sealer + professionally printed branding band.
It is a relatively straightforward packaging format, but the result can look every bit like a professionally produced retail ready meal.
And importantly, the system can grow with the business.
A smaller producer may begin with a manual ENTERLINE machine and a limited selection of trays. A higher-volume operation can move to an EHQ automatic-drawer machine and run a broader selection of trays using interchangeable heater sets.
Starting a Fitness-Meal or Ready-Meal Business?
If you are planning to pack frozen or chilled fitness meals, meal-prep portions or other prepared foods, send MIPAQ some basic information about what you are producing:
your approximate portion size, whether you want a single or divided tray, the number of meals you expect to pack per day and whether the meals will be chilled, frozen and/or reheated by the customer.
From there we can recommend the appropriate ENTERLINE tray, lidding film, heater set and sealing machine for the application.
And if you also need professionally printed branding around the finished tray, we can point you towards specialist label and print suppliers to help complete the package.