Henkel coatings and Panverta CPP films for dry food packaging

To protect dry foods from the environment, they are often packaged in multiple layers. An outer layer, a barrier layer and an inner layer are standard for many types of packaging. Depending on the specific requirements for barrier properties and shelf life of the product, two to five layers may be used, which can result in a lot of waste.

Together with Panverta CPP, Henkel Adhesive Technologies has developed films with an improved oxygen barrier layer, allowing the number of packaging layers to be reduced.

The solution has improved the oxygen barrier performance of metallised cast polypropylene (CPP) to less than 0.5 cc/m².day and CPP with aluminium oxide coating (AIO_x) films to less than 8 cc/m².day.

The jointly developed innovation is designed to ensure that vital oxygen barrier properties for dry food packaging can be achieved when switching from multi-material designs to mono-material polypropylene (PP).

Henkel’s contribution to the collaboration is the recyclable Loctite Liofol oxygen barrier coating. The range has both offline and inline coating options and due to its good oxygen barrier properties, the coating enables a new packaging design using only one material. It is certified recyclable by cyclos-HTP and recognised by the Association of Plastic Recyclers (APR) as meeting the Critical Guidance Protocol for PE films and flexible packaging, as mono-material packaging does not need to be separated into different components.

The oxygen barrier layer can be applied to OPP (oriented polypropylene) and PE (polyethylene) 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 characterised by good transparency.

The product will be on show at Tokyo Pack 2024.