Ceepackaging

Innovia Films’ biodegradable packaging material, NatureFlex™, is helping a raw snack food company – Superfood Snacks - to fulfill its ideal for natural eco-friendly sustainable bags to package their first product, Chocolate Goji Treats. They are a synergistically balanced fusion of some of the world’s most nutritious ancient superfoods and speciality ingredients, including Goji berries, Raw Cacao, Maca Root and sundried Vanilla Bean.

Innovia Films’ biodegradable, compostable NatureFlex™ film is being used as part of the packaging for a leading British cereal producer’s organic range.

Innovia Films has introduced the latest addition to its Propaream™ portfolio: an Easy Open packaging film, Propaream™ T710EO, designed to address the need for increased consumer convenience in the fast moving cut-size paper market.

2006 was the year when recovery of plastics reached the 50% for the first time. Underpinned by strong growth in mechanical recycling as well as energy recovery resulted in 3% points increase over 2005.

Rhodia Acetow, based in Freiburg, Germany, was awarded a WorldStar 2007 in November by the World Packaging Organisation for its product TOWCUBE®. This is an innovative vacuum film developed specially for packing bales of cellulose acetate, which is used in the manufacture of cigarette filters. Before receiving this accolade, TOWCUBE® had already won the German Packing Award (“Deutscher Verpackungspreis) – see www.verpackung.org – during the FachPack 2007 trade fair. This is also a cause for celebration for Kobusch-Sengewald, the packaging specialist that makes the new film exclusively for Rhodia.

Liver sausage is not excepted from the trend towards convenience. More and more manufacturers of spreadable sausage now offer their products in handy containers with easy-peel lids, thus ensuring that the product can be spread without the consumer dirtying his or her fingers, and that the packaging retains its attractive appearance throughout its useful life. Packaging film specialist Kobusch-Sengewald has responded to this development and designed its special FlexoLid HB film.

At Interplastica 2008 (Forum FD 39) Brückner Maschinenbau GmbH & Co. KG presents solutions leading to measurable benefits for the production of high quality oriented films, and thus leading to a steady enhancement in terms of film producers`profitability:

Eastman Chemical B.V. announced today the European availability of films made with Embrace LV, a new halogen-free copolyester resin for shrink film labels for packaged consumer goods. With better balanced shrinkage and physical characteristics previously unavailable in copolyester product offerings, Embrace LV is a single resin solution for shrink labels for the food, beverage and personal care markets.

Borealis, a leading provider of innovative, value creating plastics solutions, has developed the first polypropylene (PP) heterophasic copolymer packaging film grade that offers outstanding ductility together with excellent transparency. The grade is characterised by unique stiffness, heat and impact resistance combined with high gloss and low haze. This provides the high clarity of PP homopolymers together with the tough, non-brittle performance of heterophasic copolymers. New Borpact™ BC918CF will create opportunities for converters and end-product manufacturers of cast-, blown film and thermoformed applications such as pouches, label and lidding films.

If you want to accumulate less waste packaging, the single most important step is to shop less at supermarkets. Though the big retailers are making commendable efforts to cut down on packaging, there’s still too much of it. An 80g pack of organic Portobello mushrooms bought recently (not by me!) at a national chain came in a clingfilmed plastic tray weighing 20g – one quarter the weight of the contents.

Birkel, a leading German manufacturer of brand name products, will now be the first to offer its organic pasta in organic film. Just as new is that the film will be printed in a high-quality 8-coloured flexoprint ¾ by the packaging specialist Kobusch-Sengewald. The plastic fabricator has also recently started to offer biodegradable and compostable film made of an extruded PLA (polylactide)-blend.

New Fasson® Lean Film™ thinner-gauge self-adhesive film labelstocks will challenge current conceptions of the cost of quality self-adhesive film labelling for bulk products in the personal and home care markets. The range is launched at Labelexpo by Avery Dennison, who say its unique proposition is the instant time- and cost-savings it creates for both brand owners and label converters.

Decorative Sleeves has become the first European shrink sleeve manufacturer to include a film made from renewable resources among its range of products.

DSM Engineering Plastics has introduced Akulon XP, a high productivity grade of PA6 for film applications. Akulon XP offers a broader processing window leading to more flexibility and more uniform thickness distribution in cast film, more melt strength and better parison stability leading to optimized LDPE/LLDPE ratio in multi-layer films without sacrificing the mechanical properties, more shear thinning than with standard PA6 enabling thus higher coating velocities possible and still absolutely gel free.

The biodegradable BASF plastics Ecoflex® and Ecovio® recently received the iF material award 2007. The International Forum Design (iF), the design center in Hannover (Germany), this year conferred the award for innovative materials and material ideas for the third time.

Esko, the world's leading supplier of solutions for the digital imaging of flexo plates and for pre-production workflows in the packaging industry, announces the successful implementation of a JDF-based communication solution at Leeb Folien GmbH & Co KG. Working in collaboration with Dr. Lauterbach & Partner, Esko established an online connection between Esko BackStage and the SAP ERP system. Leeb Folien has also installed Esko WebCenter, a JDF-based online approval tool. A specialist in custom film packaging based in Memmingen, Germany, Leeb Folien has been using the new communications interface since February 2007. The installation has maximized the level of automation and significantly reduced error rates in the company's prepress workflow.

Russian linear polyethylene market grew by 75% in 2006 to over 59 thousand tons with over 80% being composed of the grades used in the stretch film production.

Fischer & Krecke delivers their first CI flexo press designed for the WetFlex process to UV-Flex GmbH, Aichstetten, Germany. The 10-color press, a FLEXPRESS 16S model, will be commissioned in the beginning of March. WetFlex is an innovative process in which the radiation cured inks developed by Sun Chemical are applied wet-on-wet to the substrate.

At FachPack, GIKO will be focusing special attention on mono and composite films with full-surface or partial wax lamination as a speciality seldom found in Europe. There is a growing market for this type of packaging in the form of twist films with aluminium lamination for confectionery, stock cube wrapping, etc.