Blog 1: southpack.com
Types Of Food Packaging Material Food needs careful packaging because of the strict regulations as well as standards imposed with regards to health issues. Accordingly, appropriate food packaging materials should be selected to provide good health protection and convenience to consumers. There are different materials to choose from for food and beverage packaging: Glass: Glass has very good barrier and has impermeable properties from water vapor and gases. It is used for the production of bottles and jars, and can be pasteurized at high temperature. Only drawback of using glass for food products is its brittleness. Metal: Used in the production of cans, metallic trays, foils and bags for food products. Metals too have very good barrier properties, yet they need to be sterilized before packaging food items. Disadvantages of using metals as food packaging is high cost and corrosion for some types. Paper and cardboard: Paper is light, easy printable but permeable to air, water vapor and gases. These are basically used for dry food such as sugar, salt, flour and others. They are very cheap materials and yet can be easily customized to various shapes and sizes. Paper as packaging material has very low impact on environment because of its highly sustainable property. Plastic: Plastic packaging is becoming widely popular even for microwave operation. Plastic can be synthetic as well as biodegradable. Synthetic plastic is characterized by a low-cost production, lightweight, good mechanical barrier properties, elastic, can be recycled but is non-biodegradable. Mixed materials (laminates): Packaging materials of this type are composed of few thin layers of different materials like metallic plastic and paper films. They also have very good barrier properties. Laminate packaging is airtight that increases the shelf life of products. Nano-composites: These are new-generation packaging with specific properties which improve mechanical as well as barrier properties. They are usually applied to production of films or bottles having less permeability for oxygen & water vapor. Food and beverages deserve the best packaging materials because of health concerns. People are becoming more health conscious and very selective about the food and drinks that they consume. Accordingly, food packaging materials should provide the utmost protection to the products for human consumption.