Powder Detergent

Powder detergent is alkaline, abrasive and dusty — hard on machines and unpleasant airborne. It is a non-free-flowing powder: builders, soda ash and surfactant granules of different particle sizes interlock instead of pouring, so the material bridges in the hopper and its bulk density shifts between the start and the end of a batch. Wear-resistant contact parts, enclosed dust-managed dosing and surfactant-proof films keep lines running clean. The abrasive fraction wears dosing surfaces, the alkalinity attacks unprotected steel, and fines that drift onto a sealing jaw are the usual cause of weak seams and leaking packs. Dust containment is a seal-quality question before it is a housekeeping one. Auger filling is the natural answer here. A volumetric cup assumes the powder falls freely and repeatably into a fixed volume, which detergent does not do — it arches, it compacts under its own weight, and the same cup delivers different weights across a shift. An auger meters by rotation, so the dose is set by turns rather than by flow, while an agitator keeps the blend moving in the hopper and prevents bridging. A powder detergent filling machine built this way runs enclosed, with dust extraction at the auger head and at the film tube. Formats follow the market. The sachet is the single-wash unit — one dose, one wash — sold where a full box is more than a household buys at once, bringing exact dosing to markets where bulk boxes invite waste. A powder detergent stick pack machine produces the same idea in a narrower body, used for trial packs, hotel and laundry service portions and promotional samples. Larger doses go into VFFS pillow bags, the standard economy pack, and into block-bottom bags that stand square on a shelf and stack cleanly on a pallet. Doses run from 1 g up to 200 kg across the range, from a single-wash sachet to bulk sacks. These are single-tube VFFS lines, so the cycle rate is the bag rate directly: 30 to 55 bags per minute, with no lane multiplication. Where a line sits in that band depends on bag length and dose weight, on the settling time the powder needs before the jaws close, and on the film being run — small sachets sit at the top of the band, large bulk bags at the bottom. Mentpack covers this product with the VB series: VB as the standard vertical machine, VB-MINI where floor space and smaller doses set the limit, VB-PLUS for higher output and heavier duty, and VB-Q for block-bottom bags. Typical customers are detergent manufacturers, private-label and contract packers filling for retail chains, and industrial laundry and hotel supply operations. Export programmes into markets where the single-wash sachet is the dominant retail unit are a common reason to add a powder detergent sachet packaging machine next to an existing carton line.