Together with a value chain team, Dow Packaging and Specialty Plastics, a business unit of Dow, is announcing the successful development of an innovative, polyethylene(PE)-based, high-barrier food pouch, which is functional and designed to enable recyclability in PE-streams. The pouches have been created together with Syntegon, Comexi, Ticinoplast and Plastchim-T.

The flexible pouches are made predominantly from a single material: PE. Mono-material pouches are easier to recycle than packaging structures available on the market today, which are made up of multiple materials, each performing a different function.

The solution that the team has been able to create enables customers to achieve the necessary functionality provided by those multiple materials – for example, oxygen and water vapor barrier, printability, toughness, stiffness, gloss and clarity – without compromising recyclability.

New PE-based, high-barrier, flexible stand-up pouches deliver toughness, stiffness and shelf-appeal.

Each project member was able to bring in a unique perspective and experience from packaging processing expertise, which led to the new pouch design being developed to run at speed on existing machinery, delivering high quality at each step of the way and therefore providing a commercially-viable solution to the market:

• The creation was enabled by the combination of a high-performance, tenter-frame biaxially-oriented polyethylene (TF-BOPE) film developed by Ticinoplast and produced at Plastchim-T, with an enhanced barrier lamination film produced at Dow’s Pack Studios Tarragona

• High-quality, solvent-free, offset printing was demonstrated on a CI8 press at Comexi where the solvent-free lamination step was also performed

• The packaging was created at high speed on Syntegon’s innovative vertical form-fill-seal (VFFS) machinery with an output of 80 pouches per minute, which makes it a commercially viable solution

The pouch can be produced at speed, on existing VFFS production lines.

Jaroslaw Jelinek, global marketing manager for oriented PE technologies, Dow Packaging and Specialty Plastics, commented, “Our global teams have been working through Pack Studios to bring the success of this PE-based barrier pouch to customers and we can’t wait for them to see it.”

Pierre Hamelink, global account management and sustainability, vertical segment, at Syntegon, said, “Syntegon is embracing the sustainability challenge towards a circular economy and therefore wants to collaborate with leading brands in the marketplace to offer the best solutions possible to its customers.”

Felip Ferrer, brand manager and business development manager of the offset printing business unit at Comexi, stated, “This project shows that by connecting our know-how with film suppliers - and our global customers for printing – we can develop more sustainable and recyclable solutions.”

Paolo Rossi, CEO and mono-material flexible packaging engineer of Ticinoplast, said, “BOPE is a rising technology and thanks to projects like this, companies can come together and create new polyethylene films that can be customized to achieve the best possible efficiency and viable solutions for consumers.”

Aydin Faik, owner of Plastchim-T, added, “Mutual efforts of all the participants have brought us here and we are confident that by investing in the first hybrid BOPE/BOPP line, we will manage to develop and present to the market new products for many other applications where recyclability will remain the main focus.”

This collaboration is another example of how Dow is working with partners to ensure that flexibles and films, which are currently hard to recycle, are able to be recycled – and to drive innovation to help keep plastic waste from entering the environment. It aligns to Dow’s target to ensure that all of its products sold into packaging applications are reusable or recyclable by 2035.

Together with a value chain team, Dow Packaging and Specialty Plastics, a business unit of Dow, is announcing the successful development of an innovative, polyethylene(PE)-based, high-barrier food pouch, which is functional and designed to enable recyclability in PE-streams. The pouches have been created together with Syntegon, Comexi, Ticinoplast and Plastchim-T.

The flexible pouches are made predominantly from a single material: PE. Mono-material pouches are easier to recycle than packaging structures available on the market today, which are made up of multiple materials, each performing a different function.

The solution that the team has been able to create enables customers to achieve the necessary functionality provided by those multiple materials – for example, oxygen and water vapor barrier, printability, toughness, stiffness, gloss and clarity – without compromising recyclability.

New PE-based, high-barrier, flexible stand-up pouches deliver toughness, stiffness and shelf-appeal.

Each project member was able to bring in a unique perspective and experience from packaging processing expertise, which led to the new pouch design being developed to run at speed on existing machinery, delivering high quality at each step of the way and therefore providing a commercially-viable solution to the market:

• The creation was enabled by the combination of a high-performance, tenter-frame biaxially-oriented polyethylene (TF-BOPE) film developed by Ticinoplast and produced at Plastchim-T, with an enhanced barrier lamination film produced at Dow’s Pack Studios Tarragona

• High-quality, solvent-free, offset printing was demonstrated on a CI8 press at Comexi where the solvent-free lamination step was also performed

• The packaging was created at high speed on Syntegon’s innovative vertical form-fill-seal (VFFS) machinery with an output of 80 pouches per minute, which makes it a commercially viable solution

The pouch can be produced at speed, on existing VFFS production lines.

Jaroslaw Jelinek, global marketing manager for oriented PE technologies, Dow Packaging and Specialty Plastics, commented, “Our global teams have been working through Pack Studios to bring the success of this PE-based barrier pouch to customers and we can’t wait for them to see it.”

Pierre Hamelink, global account management and sustainability, vertical segment, at Syntegon, said, “Syntegon is embracing the sustainability challenge towards a circular economy and therefore wants to collaborate with leading brands in the marketplace to offer the best solutions possible to its customers.”

Felip Ferrer, brand manager and business development manager of the offset printing business unit at Comexi, stated, “This project shows that by connecting our know-how with film suppliers - and our global customers for printing – we can develop more sustainable and recyclable solutions.”

Paolo Rossi, CEO and mono-material flexible packaging engineer of Ticinoplast, said, “BOPE is a rising technology and thanks to projects like this, companies can come together and create new polyethylene films that can be customized to achieve the best possible efficiency and viable solutions for consumers.”

Aydin Faik, owner of Plastchim-T, added, “Mutual efforts of all the participants have brought us here and we are confident that by investing in the first hybrid BOPE/BOPP line, we will manage to develop and present to the market new products for many other applications where recyclability will remain the main focus.”

This collaboration is another example of how Dow is working with partners to ensure that flexibles and films, which are currently hard to recycle, are able to be recycled – and to drive innovation to help keep plastic waste from entering the environment. It aligns to Dow’s target to ensure that all of its products sold into packaging applications are reusable or recyclable by 2035.