Food soft plastic packaging application and prospect analysis

Not long ago, a French wine manufacturer launched a wine product in the United States using Tetra Prisma packaging. The package has a capacity of 1L and is recyclable for easy carrying. Compared to traditional glass packaging, this package can save up to 90% of the cost. Due to its light weight, the cost of transportation is also greatly reduced. This example shows that flexible packaging is gradually penetrating into the field of traditional rigid packaging and poses a certain threat to rigid packaging. Of course, if you really want to replace hard packaging, flexible packaging needs to go a long way, especially in the beverage industry. However, industry insiders have realized this inevitable trend, that is, plastic is gradually replacing the status of glass and metal. The threat from plastic. Plastic rigid packaging has three major advantages: solid, lightweight and low cost. If it is transparent, it will be enough to match the glass. In fact, most of the condiments originally packaged in glass bottles have been converted to PET bottles. Not only that, plastic hard packaging is widely used in products such as vegetable oil and bottled water. Transparency is a very important feature. Consumers want to see the quality of the contents through packaging, especially for vegetable oils. The most typical representative of plastic rigid packaging is a thin plastic bottle. This bottle accounts for almost half of all plastic packaging on the market, covering vegetable oil and bottled water. The main reason why thin-walled plastic bottles are so popular is low cost. Manufacturers use this plastic bottle to meet consumer demand for price. Plastic packaging has many advantages. For example, plastic packaging can be designed in a multi-layer structure, and even an aluminum foil layer can be added, which makes the function of a single package rich. But this does not meet the 3R principle, especially the last R - recycling. How plastic bottled beer is filled with oxygen-sensitive beverages in transparent plastic bottles is the focus of current technology research and development. The PET bottle weighs only 1/7 of the glass and does not break. It has achieved great success in soft drink packaging, especially for 2-3L bottles. In recent years, small-capacity, single-drink beverages have slowly abandoned the original glass or canned packaging, and instead used PET bottles. However, the road that beer wants to change from glass bottles to PET is extremely difficult. The bottle must have a strong barrier to carbon dioxide and oxygen, and must be transparent and strong. The unit cost of PET bottles is twice that of ordinary glass bottles, and it has high gas permeability, especially oxygen and carbon dioxide. The shelf life of beer depends on the longest time its taste can be maintained, and the infiltration of oxygen directly affects the taste of the beer. In addition, a reduction in the degree of carbonation can also result in a change in the taste of the beer. At present, the research focus of plastic materials is on how to improve the barrier properties of plastic bottles to oxygen and carbon dioxide, and how to extend the shelf life of plastic bottled beer. Another major obstacle is the way beer is filled. At present, 80% of the world's beer is disinfected by tunnel pasteurization. The temperature at which this process is used is not necessarily acceptable for PET bottles.