New frozen food packaging from Faerch Plast
Denmark-based company Færch Plast says it has developed a high strength ‘frost’ CPET (Crystalline Polyethylene Terephthalate) material for the packaging of frozen food products.
It says it has also developed a new ‘real life’ test environment ‘to ensure unrivalled impact and crush resistance at low temperatures’.
Impact resistance of plastics packaging materials is normally tested using the Bruceton Staircase method which determines weight, height and energy where a sample (flat sheet) fails when it is impacted with a free-falling weight or dart. If the sample does not fail, either the height or weight is increased incrementally until failure occurs. However, impact values from this test are not absolute and do not take into account the intended use of the material, says managing director Joe Iannidinardo.
“The Bruceton Staircase technique does not replicate what happens to materials in a real life environment, for example, during transit, storage, packing and whilst on-shelf,” he says. “As a result, we deviated from this method when testing the frost CPET by using actual trays instead of flat sheet and focusing on two specific impact areas – the corner and middle of the U-rim. The whole test was conducted in a freezer trailer at temperatures of -22˚C.”