Abstract: A package for holding pourable products includes a body of composite sheet material having a closure seam that extends across the body. A tear-open strip is positioned on the body between the block and the closure seam and a side weld is located along a portion of the side edge of the package. A punch cut which defines a grip tab, is positioned in the side weld. The grip tab is adapted to be gripped by a user in order to initiate tearing of the pacakge.

Abstract: A method of packaging fluent solid materials such as coffee includes determining the gross weight of filled packets and determining the tare allowance of the packets. The tare allowance is determined through random sampling and that value is subtracted from the gross weight of the filled packets in order to define a nominal value. That nominal value is then fed to the filling machine in a closed control loop. The apparatus for packaging fluent solid materials includes a bag forming machine, a filling machine for filling the bags, a gross balance for filling the bags and a conveyor for conveying the bags. A switch is provided for filtering out empty bags from the conveyor to a tare balance and a control unit is connected to the measuring outputs of the tare balance. The regulating output of the control unit permits bags to be filtered out and weighted at a defined frequency.