Background KIVO Zwolle
Bunzl, a stock-listed trading company with a large portfolio of packaging products and consumables, has been an important customer of KIVO for years. Especially in the field of bread bags for bakeries and supermarkets KIVO and Bunzl have a strong collaboration.
Besides being a trader, Bunzl also had its own factory (Polaris Packaging), in which they produced bread bags themselves. Producing bread bags was for Bunzl not one of their core businesses. For KIVO, on the other hand, it could be a logical addition to their production capacity.
Consequently, in February 2012 Polaris Verpakkingen B.V. Zwolle was acquired by KIVO.
All activities remained based in Zwolle under the management of location chief and planner Gerard Wijgerde. Soon after the acquisition, additional wicketers of KIVO were moved to Zwolle.
With minimal overhead, expanded capacity and full focus on the production of bread bags only, KIVO quickly became a healthy and efficiently organized factory.
Activities KIVO Zwolle
KIVO is fully focused on the production of bread bags in Zwolle. On so called wicketers reels of film (usually printed), are folded into bags, sealed and bundled together onto U-brackets.
These bundles are used by industrial bakeries on their automated packaging lines, in order to quickly pack and preserve the freshly baked breads.
The bread bags are also used for smaller scale packaging, for example in bakery departments of supermarkets or in bakery shops.
We are able to work with film for deep freeze applications and film suitable for pasteurization. If desired, instead of production on u-brackets, bags can also be sealed on blocks with tear-off perforation.
Developments KIVO Zwolle
In the fall of 2016, KIVO moved into a new building in Zwolle. This new building is completely adjusted to the high demands that KIVO and the food industries require from production of food grade packaging materials.
The new and bigger building provides space to further increase capacity. In March 2017, we installed a new machine already.
With its well-organized and efficient setup, the factory can be rightly called ‘lean’.
Also in the future, we will continuously develop, grow and maintain the desired flexibility and fast service that our customers are used to.
Video KIVO Zwolle
In the video below, we get a peek inside KIVO Zwolle, where hundreds of millions of bread bags are produced each year.