New Barrier Material Extends Product Shelf Life

In the beverage bottling market, the application of PET is one of the fastest growing areas and has become the first choice for replacing glass and canned packaging, but its use is still limited to the packaging of carbonated beverages and water.

PET bottles are often used to package soft drinks to prevent the loss or loss of carbonate saturation. For many oxygen-sensitive foods and beverages, the barrier performance of PET bottles is not enough, so many fruit juices and beer products are often packaged in glass bottles, cans or cartons, and aluminum foil.

PET materials do not block Oxygen and other gases that may pass through packaging containers. This can lead to shortened shelf life of juices, teas, and carbonated beverages, affecting the taste, color, or vitamin content of beverages.

Researchers at the South African Council for Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR) have invented a barrier material called Oxyplete, which has 30 times better barrier properties than regular PET. If beverage manufacturers do not want to use glass or canned packaging, this material is undoubtedly It is a good choice.

According to the researchers, many high-barrier packagings are mostly multi-layer composite packaging, that is, PET and high barrier plastics such as ethylene-vinyl alcohol copolymer, nylon 6 or nylon MXD6 are compounded, but it is difficult to recover together. Problems, and the cost of manufacturing equipment is high. Oxyplete is better than currently used barrier materials and has lower cost and is very competitive in the market. It can even be applied to the demanding beer cold, hot filling and baby food packaging.

This technology is based on the principle of double outer coating. Prior to coating, the PET surface is activated after oxyfluorination, corona discharge or plasma treatment and then conventionally sprayed, coated and dried. Make the coated material look very beautiful, can be applied to different thermoplastics, such as PET and PP.

This layer of coating itself has barrier properties, thus giving greater choice to the selection of the base material. Since the coating is done in two separate steps, there is no need for a production line dedicated to barrier packaging. Because, in South Africa, the market share of the barrier packaging is relatively small, this point is very important for them. The researchers also said that Oxyplete can meet all the technical requirements for beverage packaging, including stickiness tests, scratches, oxygen permeability, and expansion tests that do not affect recovery issues.

In addition, Constar International of the United States has developed a material that, when mixed with single-layer PET, freezes oxygen to prevent deterioration of juice, tea, and carbonated beverages. This product, known as DiamondClear, is now in the pre-approval testing phase of submitting reports to the relevant regulatory agencies.

Source: Modern Packaging