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Technology
Improvements in seal integrity should lead to less food waste
A 2009 study conducted by WRAP and the University of Lincoln it was found that around 8% of packages failed in the supply chain. Companies like Dow are producing sealing layer materials to improve film seal integrity, thus reducing food waste.Three factors should be considered in VFFS performance: heat seal, hot tack and caulkability. The hot tack performance is the ability of the material to resist the spring back force, and the caulking property is the ability to flow into gussets and wrinkles. Thus a polyolefin plastomer (POP) that fills the gaps enables hermetic sealing and Dow has an octene-based range of these materials.
Also in the adhesives and sealants category, Henkel is looking at food safe adhesive interlayers for multilayer packaging films. The focus has been on low migration, low toxicity materials for applications from Alu/PETP/CPP retortable pouches to coextruded OPP/LDPE packaging films.
A new laminating product range has been developed for bio-based films from renewable raw materials, based on low viscosity, solvent-free PUR. Polybutene products from LyondellBasell are used in peal-seal films and to modify the seal initiation temperature in BOPP and COPP from 115C down to 75C. In multilayers the PB-1 is blended with PE depending on the final requirements. There is a new family of C4 Koattro resins developed for PP modification and in pilot production in Italy.
