These films make recycling easier for dry-food packaging
Three-layer, multi-material packaging is common for effectively protecting dry food from the environment, but the combination of materials makes this type of film difficult to separate and therefore difficult to recycle. The Liofol product range offers significant benefits to film and packaging manufacturers, with both offline and inline coating options (photo). Due to its excellent oxygen-barrier properties, the coating enables a new packaging design using only one material. This reduces the amount of material used in food packaging without compromising quality and integrity. It is also certified recyclable by cyclos-HTP and recognized by the Association of Plastic Recyclers (APR) as meeting the Critical Guidance Protocol for polyethylene (PE) films and flexible packaging. Because mono-material packaging does not need to be separated into different components, the recycling quality is increased while the effort and cost of recycling is reduced. The oxygen barrier layer can be applied to OPP (oriented polypropylene) and PE films at high machine speeds in excess of 150 to 200 m/min and a weight of less than 1 g/m² in both flexo and gravure printing processes, and is also characterized by excellent transparency. This company’s cooperation with Panverta Cakrakencana, one of the leading film manufacturers in Indonesia, has successfully provided a solution to improve the oxygen barrier performance of metallized cast polypropylene (CPP) and aluminum oxide coating (AIOx) films. The joint development has ensured that these vital oxygen-barrier properties for dry-food packaging can be achieved when switching from multi-material designs to mono-material polypropylene (PP). — Henkel Adhesive Technologies, Dusseldorf, Germany