Michigan State University's School of Packaging held its 2nd Packaging Executive Forum this week.  The forum discussion focused on plans for the school, general trends in packaging engineering, and, more deeply, the subject of sustainability.  

While the term, "Sustainable Packaging" can border on cliche, the speakers and panels at the forum probed the subjet from new angles.  Here is a quick summary of the points that caught my attention:

1.  Sustainability of a packaging concept has many dimensions including: Carbon footprint, Recyclability/reusability profile, Pollution (particulate and VOC) created in the manufacturing of packaging, Protection of public health, Performance of the package (e.g. does it protect the product as it should).

2.  The performance of a package is as important - if not more so - than the environmental footprint of the package alone.  For most packaged goods, the energy consumed to grow, process, and transport the product before it is packaged is, in fact, larger than the energy needed to manufacture the package.  If the product cannot be consumed or used as intended, due to package failure, than it does not matter how environmentally friendly the packaging is.

3.  Plastic vs. paper vs. carton vs. metal vs. glass | flexible vs. rigid.  There are pros and cons of each package concept and a time and place for each.  Format selection decisions need to consider package performance and consumer use in addition to how sustainable the manufacture of the packaging is.

4.  Adoption of new technologies need cooperation from the entire value chain: brand owners, material suppliers, converters, fillers, equipment suppliers, and researchers.

Not surprisingly, we see many opportunities for electron beams to help make packaging and packaged products more sustainable in every dimension.

Packaging Strategies held its 10th annual Global Pouch Forum this past week in Chicago.  The event drew two hundred or so equipment providers, material suppliers, converters, co-packers, and brand owners: we were the only electron beam company on hand.  The discussion focused on trends, innovation, and sustainability issues surrounding the pouch packaging format.

For those of you who are not familiar, pouches are one of the fastest growing methods for the packaging of foods, beverages, and consumer goods. Wild Flavors broke the mold when they introduced the Capri Sun pouch back in 1981. Since this time, the use of pouches as a packaging technology has grown exponentially and is now encroaching on many of the packaging applications traditionally dominated by cans, bottles, and boxes.

Some of the advances in pouch technology discussed were:

• Resealability (Sargento Foods was given an award for it resealable shredded cheese bag)
• Easy pour features
• Freshness seals
• Aseptic filling
• Barrier technologies and active packaging concepts (we discussed this technology in Electron Beam Curing for Advanced Funtional Coatings)

As would be expected, sustainability was a common theme.  While comparisons of carbon footprint are difficult and infinitely debatable, the pouch has some intuitive advantages over traditional packaging formats:

For Beverages: Less resin used than PET bottles

For Perishables: Resealability reduces food waste over cans

For Dry Goods: Lighter weight and cheaper to produce than bag in box

Ebeams for Pouches? 

Electron Beam technology can impact the pouch business in a few key ways: 

1. In-line electron beam sterilization of pouches and web material is low heat, chemical free alternative for aseptic filling applications
2. EB Curing of inks, coatings, and adhesives can be an energy efficient, VOC -free alternative to traditional solvent based curing
3. EB crosslinking of films can improve strength and heat resistance of common polymer materials - leading to less overall resin used in the packaging.

In March, we have seen a lot of interest around using for active or functional coating technologies.  While each project we collaborate on is confidential, we have seen some generic themes we wanted to highlight in the hopes of sparking other ideas.  Leveraging the unique capability of low energy electron beams for these types coatings is just an extension of the already well established curing or surface modification applications that have been the driver of EB usage for the last 3 decades.  The deposition of large amounts of energy to the surface layers can enable novel and desirable results when combined with the right chemistry.

Aylvin Dias, Ph.D, from DSM Biomedical Materials writes on advances in functional coatings for medical devices in The Evolving Functionality of Coatings in Medical Device Magazine. 

There are an equal number of exciting advances in active coating technologies for food and beverage packaging applications as dicussed by Aaron Brody in Exploring MAP and Active Packaging in Food Technology.

Low energy electron beam curing and/or surface modification can be an enabling process technology for these types of applications.  While the real magic is in the chemistry, using EB energy to polymerize a coating or graft a coating to a substrate can deliver the high performance required for these applications.  Many traditional surface treatment approaches (heat, UV, plasma) do not have the focused energy deposition to achieve same effect or they can damage the substrate.  Advanced vacuum deposition approaches can work but are often not commercially scalable.

We see a trend towards designer chemistries based on EB process technology playing a big role the commercial scale-up of active coating technologies. 

For more information, check out AEB solutions for Curing and Polymer Treatment.

 

The FDA approved Food Contact Notification (FCN) 772 on March 7, 2008 which covers several acrylate monomers for direct food contact ink, coating, and adhesive formulations.

Electron beam (EB) curing technology has long been valued in food package printing applications as a strategy for managing migration risk for food packaging applications. 

The approval of FCN 772 represents the removes a major hurdle to more freely deploying energy curable systems for direct food packaging applications.  The combination of this new standard for assessing the risk of these monomers and the inherent effectiveness of EB curing technology creates a powerful business case for the adoption of electron beam curing.

For an overview of the benefits of using electron beam for food packaging applications, check out The Changing Economics of EB Curing.