A variety of packaging materials

The choice of packaging materials is very important, especially in the packaging market, where more functional materials are required, such as barriers, punctures, and thin walls. In the past six months, many new products have emerged in the market, providing more choices for the packaging industry.

High shrinkage film

Eastman recently introduced an Embrace shrink film, which has a shrinkage of up to 80% and fits snugly onto the surfaces of various containers. The film uses a winding design, has a very high print resolution, and can effectively represent the brand image.

The use of Embrace shrink film allows the design of innovative bottles with attractive colors for 360° label design. In short, we can use a variety of materials flexibly to give full play to creativity and imagination.

Embrace's application areas include:
* energy drink;
* Dairy drinks and liquid milk;
* fruit juice;
* Carbonated drinks;
* Adult beverages;
* bottled water;
* Frozen desserts;
* Cheese, yogurt and yogurt products;
* Packaged foods and condiments;
* Drugs and vitamins;
* Cosmetics and personal care products;
* baby food;
* car;
* Lawn and gardens.

Lu Shihao, business manager of the company's chemical speciality plastics Asia Pacific, said that from an environmental perspective, Embrace shrink film can be used as a substitute for PVC. The shrink film has the characteristics of good gloss and strength and can be used to redefine the beverage brand. Its luster and shrinkage can make the packaging pattern on the bottled beverage more vivid, highlighting the image on the supermarket shelves.

Standard PC Bottle

Drinking fountains are widely used in shopping malls, public buildings, office buildings, playgrounds and homes. Innovative modern drinking fountains are everywhere, giving people cool and refreshing. Drinking water is good for health and can enhance vitality. Our daily drinking water should not be less than 1-2 liters, and when the weather is hot, it should reach 4 liters or more. Only in this way can we supplement the calcium, magnesium and other important minerals consumed by daily physical activity. In the past, people often drank water in basements or restaurants to meet this demand. Now, drinking fountains are ubiquitous, and free drinking water is available on most occasions, allowing pedestrians and guests to enjoy refreshing refreshing water. Companies such as Capsnap and Watertek produce uniquely shaped, large-scale drinking fountains from Bayer's Makrolon(R) plastic materials.

Makrolon(r) plastic is transparent and the containers used on the drinking fountains provide insight into the hygiene and freshness of the water contained. The plastic is a high-tech product that is lightweight and can reduce the burden of handling 5 gallons. At the same time, the plastic will not break, so the transportation is very safe.

Makrolon(r) is a proven plastic that can be widely used in the food industry. The special Makrolon(R) plastic complies with EU national hygiene regulations (including previous BGA recommendations and current BgVV recommendations) and the U.S. Food and Drug Administration regulations for food contact materials. Therefore, preconditions have been created to fully comply with the various technologies and health quality standards of the food industry.
Currently, Bayer polymer plastics have been used in beverage containers, food containers, recycled bottles and milk bottles. As early as the 50's, this plastic was used to produce tableware. In the Netherlands, plastic has replaced glass milk bottles. Big European dairy manufacturers use yogurt bottles made of Makrolon(R) plastic to fill yogurt, milk and cheese. And Makrolon(r) containers are extremely lightweight, and suppliers can save on fuel and transportation costs.

Equipped with stretching hood technology

ExxonMobil Chemical Company has successfully developed an advanced custom co-extrusion packaging technology. The unique structure of NexxstarTM resin can bring benefits to processing plants and end users. Nexxstar stretch hoods reduce costs, improve toughness, and provide superior optical properties for end-of-line packaging applications compared to existing packaging solutions.

ExxonMobil worked closely with Lachenmeier, a leading manufacturer of end-of-line machinery (including stretch hoods), to apply this new type of solution (coextrusion structure, using the new high-performance EscoreneTM Ultra copolymer and ExceedTM metallocene polyethylene as raw materials) The latest commercial stretch hood machinery for end-use applications.

Ken Glover, global polyethylene market manager at ExxonMobil, said, “We have proved through analysis that Nexxstar's new coextrusion stretch hood technology is superior to shrink wrap and paperboard packaging in terms of film unit cost, operating cost, product protection, and packaging speed. Attracting. Compared with the current design, this film structure will take product performance one step further."

Nexxstar stretch hoods are now sold globally. The main advantages include the ability to reduce operating costs by up to 30%. This is mainly due to the fact that reducing the thickness of the film structure still ensures the same holding pressure; the package integrity is strong and it has excellent puncture resistance and Tear resistance, therefore, can reduce product loss during transportation and storage; transparency is enhanced, bar code reading is facilitated, and branding is enhanced without adding labels.

This innovation is a combination of ExxonMobil's advanced polyethylene process and film application technology, providing processing plants and end users with a new generation of enhanced custom co-extruded packaging solutions. The company can provide Nexxstar SM consulting and custom design services according to customer requirements.

PE material still grows

In the two key markets in the Asia Pacific region, China and India, the demand for polyethylene (PE) is expected to increase by 8%-10%, which is higher than the global average demand. PE is the main packaging material, so it can be expected that the continuous growth of the packaging market will drive PE demand. Borouge saw this opportunity and invested US$1.2 billion to build modern petrochemical facilities in Ruwais, United Arab Emirates, including an ethylene cracker with an annual output of 600,000 tons and two polyethylene plants. The initial capacity is to produce 225 thousand tons of bimodal linear low density (LLD) and high density (HD) polyethylene per year.

Bimodal polyethylene is suitable for applications with high technical requirements, such as soft and hard packaging. Soft plastic packaging includes food, consumer products and industrial packaging; hard plastic packaging is medicine, cosmetics, beverages and household chemicals. Beixing bimodal polyethylene is used for the production of flexible packaging films. It has good mechanical properties, good processability, and high yield, which can reduce processing costs. The company said that the demand for molded products and hard plastic packaging in the Asia-Pacific region is expected to increase substantially.

Borouge's major markets are the Middle East, China, Northeast Asia, the Indian subcontinent, East Africa, Southeast Asia, Australia, and New Zealand. In the next two years, the demand for polyethylene in these areas is expected to increase by 5%-10%. Nearly 80% of the PE produced in Ruwers will be sold in these areas and it will be sold to Europe.

Nylon film

Nylon 6 film material is a good oxygen barrier and puncture resistant film material. However, the current nylon 6 film material supplied on the market is not synchronized with the LLDPE/LDPE due to the change of viscosity with the processing speed, resulting in low productivity of the multilayer oxygen barrier film, large product loss (such as no nylon material on the edge), and poor appearance quality. Good (if the film has a curl or ripple). Due to the large investment in thin-film production equipment, manufacturers of multilayer oxygen-barrier films are eager to find a new type of nylon 6 film material that can efficiently separate oxygen and greatly increase production efficiency. For this reason, after years of hard work, DSM recently introduced a new generation of high-tech nylon 6 film material Akulon(r) XP to the market.

Akulon(r) XP can be produced in a variety of processes. In the casting production process, the distribution and thickness of different material layers are more uniform, the necking phenomenon is small, so that the cutting amount of the waste material is greatly reduced; the production speed of the nylon film can be increased by 100%, and the energy consumption can be reduced by at least 50%. .

In the co-extrusion process (multi-layer paper-plastic coating), the stability of the film has been greatly increased, the necking phenomenon has been greatly reduced, and the production speed can be increased to 1,100 m/min. When Akulon(R) XP reduced the adhesive thickness of multilayer oxygen barrier films by 50%, the stability and production speed of the films were not affected at all.

As for the blow molding process, the stable film layer structure enables the manufacturer to design and manufacture unique film products; Akulon(r) XP can reduce the adhesive thickness of the multilayer oxygen barrier film by 50%; when the nylon layer mainly prevents tearing When effected, the thickness can be reduced by 50%; due to the reduction of the film thickness, the production speed of the film can be greatly improved.

The antireflection agent becomes the standard

Due to its transparency, PP is one of the packaging materials commonly used in the packaging market. However, as consumers demand more and more packaging and make packaging more transparent, they have become a popular new material in the packaging industry. Milliken (Milliken) introduced Millad(R) 3988, a clearing agent that is particularly suitable for clear polypropylene products and packaging. Millad(r) 3988 has become the world's standard for the production of transparent polypropylene, and at the same time eliminates the taste and odor problems of second-generation anti-reflection agents. It has excellent transparency, functional feel, thermal stability, and nucleating effect. Clear polypropylene for injection molding, thin-wall injection molding, blow molding, sheet extrusion, and thermoforming.

In addition, Milliken will introduce a new level of nucleation technology to the Chinese market - Hyperform(r) HPN-68. This new type of polypropylene nucleating agent can increase crystallinity, help manufacturers improve product performance, and at the same time reduce costs by reducing film thickness and producing faster. This additive also has the unique benefit of combining strong nucleation with isotropic shrinkage, which significantly reduces the warpage of molded polypropylene parts.