Barrier properties for food packaging: a quick glance
Barrier properties are essential for maintaining food quality and safety. Packaging systems with optimal barrier properties protect their contents against water vapour, gases, light and aroma compounds, therefore ultimately against deterioration. Here’s a quick look at some of the packaging materials on the market, and how they compare when it comes to barrier properties.
GLASS
Glass is a traditional, fully recyclable packaging material that offers significant protection against vapour, gases and odours. Coloured glass can furthermore protect contents from light. However, incorrectly designed closures (caps, corks, lids or plugs) can compromise the benefits of glass packaging and reduce contents’ shelf life.
METAL
Metals used in food packaging include tinplate and aluminium, which are used to manufacture cans and food trays. These offer impressive performance when it comes to shelf life and safety, preventing bacteria, light and oxygen from reaching contents. One major disadvantage however, is potential corrosion.
PLASTIC
Plastics are widely used in packaging, and are appreciated for their flexibility, range of potential applications and thermal stability. The permeability of polymers is subject to a range of factors, such as crystallinity, thickness and molecular orientation, alongside conditions such as humidity and temperature. Polymeric films rarely offer sufficient barrier properties on their own, and are therefore frequently combined with other materials, such as metals and paper, to create composite packaging materials.
LAMINATES
Laminates are multi-layer, composite packaging materials that contain a combination of plastics, foils and/or paper to fit the specific barrier needs of given food products, providing more strength and better barrier properties than monofilms. However, they pose considerable challenges when it comes to recyclability, as their various layers need to be separated before processing, something conventional recycling streams are unable to undertake.
Nissha Metallizing Solutions' METIVO line
METIVO is a range of food packaging products that offers optimal barrier properties, design versatility and high recyclability via conventional recycling streams. Find out more about METIVO and its applications here.