Meat Packaging Machines: Scaling Stretch Wrappers for Protein Production

December 2025

Global demand for protein isn’t slowing down. In 2024, global meat production was estimated at 365 million metric tons, up about 1.3% year over year, with poultry leading that growth (OECD, July 2025).

For chicken, pork, and beef plants, that kind of throughput isn’t just a baseline, it’s the goal. And once product leaves the cut floor, your stretch wrappers (aka tray overwrappers) are either keeping pace or bottlenecking your entire operation.

This is where the right stretch wrapper design becomes a strategic advantage. Let’s look at how to scale tray overwrapping for chicken, pork and beef without sacrificing hygiene, film efficiency, or uptime.

Scaling Consideration #1: Mastering Current Throughput

Tray overwrapping remains a workhorse for fresh meat because it delivers a tight, attractive pack while supporting shelf life and leak control. Typical case-ready meat is placed onto a rigid or expanded tray, often with an absorbent pad, then wrapped in a highly oxygen-permeable film to maintain color and freshness.

For high-volume plants, the stretch wrapper must:

• Run across product families (chicken, pork, beef) on the same line
• Handle size, height, and width variations (drumsticks vs. steaks)
• Maintain pack quality at speed: no film tails, no “smiles,” no broken seals
• Minimize unplanned stops due to film changes, cleaning, or mechanical tweaks

Omori’s stretch wrappers are engineered with that reality in mind: speed is important, but consistent, repeatable throughput is what delivers ROI when it comes to meat packaging.

Scaling Consideration #2: Engineering for Mixed Product Lines

Running chicken, pork, and beef on the same packaging line is a reality for most high-volume processors, but it puts unique pressure on your stretch wrapper. Each protein family brings its own quirks in product geometry, tray size, drip potential, and presentation requirements. Meat packaging equipment that excels with whole birds may struggle with pork roasts; a machine tuned for steaks may not tolerate the speed and variability of wings or drumsticks.

That’s why engineering for mixed protein lines isn’t about hitting a single top speed; it’s about building a tray overwrapper with the flexibility, control, and stability to deliver consistent pack quality across every SKU you throw at it, all day long. Here’s the protein play-by-play you need to do just that.

Poultry: Whole Birds, Wings, and Thighs

Poultry is often your highest-volume SKU, and it’s the least cooperative on the conveyor. You’re dealing with:

• Whole birds with variable weights and profiles
• Small, loose items like wings and drumsticks
• Higher drip potential, which can affect film performance and hygiene

Key design considerations for poultry on a stretch wrapper:

• Stable infeed and lug design to keep trays from skewing as they enter the wrapping section
• Uniform height and width are necessary so you can run a whole bird and a low tray pack on the same platform
• Film memory and tension control to wrap irregular shapes tightly without crushing foam trays
• Multiple tray types and sizes can be run with ease

When the wrapper can absorb those variations automatically through servo-driven motion and recipe-based settings, you protect throughput even as SKUs shift throughout the day.

Pork: Chops, Roasts, and Value Packs

Pork brings more variety in cut geometry and tray footprint:

• Narrow, tall roasts vs. low, wide family packs
• Different tray materials and depths for case-ready vs. club-store formats

To keep pork moving, your tray overwrapper should offer:

• Fast, tool-less format changes between tray footprints
• Adjustable film overhang and cut length so you aren’t drowning small packs in film designed for larger trays
• Consistent seal control to avoid leakers in vacuum-assisted MAP or leak-tight packs downstream

The more of this you can lock into recipes at the HMI, the less you depend on “tribal knowledge” at the machine and the more predictable your throughput becomes. Omori Stretch Wrappers have 64 preset product recipes so you can do exactly that.

Beef: Steaks and Roasts at Retail Quality

Beef is where presentation really sells. Consumers tend to associate bright cherry-red color and tight, clear overwrap with freshness, and tray overwrapping is widely used for that case-ready look.

For beef, your wrapper must:

• Maintain a smooth, glassy film finish — no wrinkles or webbing
• Avoid excessive tension that can damage premium cuts or deform trays
• Provide repeatable alignment of label windows so branding and grade labels land where you expect

A tray overwrapper that can balance tension, temperature, and speed across different beef formats (from two-pack steaks to large roasts) gives you more flexibility in how you merchandise product without slowing the line.

Scaling Consideration #3: Changeovers — From Whole Birds to Steaks in One Shift

Most plants don’t have the luxury of dedicating a wrapper to a single SKU. You might run:

• Beef patties in the morning
• Split breasts mid-shift
• Steaks or pork chops in the afternoon

Every changeover is an opportunity for lost throughput. High-performance stretch wrappers minimize that loss through:

• Recipe-driven setup: Operators select “Whole Bird 4 lb” or “Beef Steak 2-pack” and the machine automatically adjusts speeds, film length, tension, and wrapping parameters.
• Quick-change tooling: Guides, infeed lugs, and product stops that can be swapped without tools reduce mechanical downtime.
• Clear visual standards: Built-in images or presets for “good pack” vs. “bad pack” help line teams validate settings quickly.

The Omori STN-8500 Series Stretch Wrapper is specifically designed to deliver high-speed tray overwrap with flexible changeovers, supporting a wide range of tray sizes and product types while maintaining throughput and pack quality. For decision makers, the ROI is simple: shaving 10–15 minutes off each changeover across multiple SKU switches per shift can translate to thousands of extra saleable packs per week.

Scaling Consideration #4: Film Loading, Film Width & Tension

Film is one of your most visible ongoing costs. As meat packaging grows, so do film expenses. Your stretch wrapper should help you control material usage, not just burn through rolls faster.

Fast, Safe Film Loading

Look for features like:

• Front-loading to simplify changeovers
• Large-diameter film roll capacity to reduce the number of changeovers per shift

Every avoided stop keeps your upstream operations in sync with packaging.

Matching Film Width to Tray Families

Oversized film rolls are silent margin killers. A scalable stretch wrapper should:

• Support multiple film widths and make it easy to switch between them
• Allow fine control of cut length and overhang per recipe
• Maintain consistent stretch ratios so you can confidently use thinner gauges or more sustainable films

This level of control becomes even more important as plants look to transition toward more recyclable or lower-impact films, such as PE-based options, while preserving performance.

Intelligent Tension Management

Too much tension: cracked trays, split corners, and crushed foam
Too little tension: loose packs, wrinkles, and leakers

Servo-driven film feeds and closed-loop tension control help the wrapper automatically balance these forces across different tray loads and film specs. That not only improves appearance but also reduces rework and waste.

How Omori Helps Meat Processors Scale with Confidence

Omori’s stretch wrappers are designed with one assumption: your protein lines are running hard. From wings to pork chops and premium steaks, the equipment has to:

• Keep throughput high and predictable
• Make changeovers fast and repeatable
• Use film intelligently and efficiently
• Maintain consistent, retail-ready pack quality

If you’re looking at meat packaging machines to scale your stretch wrapping capacity, the question isn’t just “How fast can it run?” but “How reliably can it keep up with the real world of protein production?” A question Omori experts can help you answer! Fill out the form below to get the conversation started.