Sustainable Stand Up Pouch Packaging
Stand out – and up – with innovative and sustainable packaging
Stand up pouches do exactly that – stand up. They are appreciated for being a convenient, attractive, retail-friendly packaging method ever since they had been introduced in the early 1980s. We have been working to develop efficient stand-up pouches since they appeared in the market. They had been primarily used for beverages (mainly juices) until recent years in which this packaging format has conquered a broad range of end-use applications in food, home and personal care markets. We’ve also worked on advancing the technology and ensuring stand up pouches become a sustainable packaging solution.
Pouches designed for recyclability
Our scientists went to work with value chain partners to create a stand up pouch that was better for everyone. Together we developed new materials and technologies to redesign flexible stand up pouches for recyclability. The solution was a stand up pouch made with one raw material - polyethylene. The polyethylene stand up pouch offers the same convenience and performance of multi-material pouches with the added benefit of being recyclable where polyethylene bag and film collection and recycling infrastructure currently exists. An all-polyethylene stand up pouch has several advantages:
- Comparable functional performance to multi-material structures
- Often lighter in weight, which can lead to decreased energy use in manufacturing, transportation and refrigeration
- Unique, glossy or matte and aesthetically pleasing design capabilities
- Designed for recyclability*
- Structure simplification with the potential for total system cost saving
Our broad portfolio of high performance sealants, abuse resins, tie layers, compatibilizers, thermal resistance lacquers and adhesives can be used to customize film structures depending on the final application needs in order to design a recycle ready pouch solution.
Reverse Spout Sealing Technology allows for mono-material spouted pouches
Jointly with spout manufacturer Menshen we have developed an innovative sealing technology to enable the manufacture of mono-material spouted pouches that are designed for recyclability and help advance plastic circularity goals. The new process is designed to easily seal spouts in more heat sensitive, mono-material structures made from all-polypropylene or all-polyethylene packaging layers. The result is a good quality spout seal and pouches that looks great on the shelf.
Tenter frame biaxially oriented polyethylene (TF-BOPE) for packaging
We recently launched tenter frame biaxially oriented polyethylene (TF-BOPE) for pouches and other packaging applications. TF-BOPE film has excellent mechanical properties and material rigidity, as well as outstanding optical and printing performance. This technology features:
- Excellent optical properties such as transparency and glossiness
- Improved impact strength, puncture resistance
- Better tensile strength and modulus
- Excellent flex cracking resistance which sustains great tenacity even under low temperatures
- Designed for Recyclability
With the excellent optical performance and printability, the TF-BOPE film can be used directly as the printed layer of the packaging. By combining it with other polyethylene functional layers, TF-BOPE can achieve a polyethylene structure that is designed for recycling (recyclable in communities with existing PE recycle streams).
Machine Direction Orientation polyethylene (MDO) for packaging
In close collaboration with extrusion partners, we have recently introduced mono-material pouches designed for recyclability using the latest machine oriented extrusion technology with high performance polyethyelene resins. MDO PE films offer very good optics, rigidity and stiffness and offer a complementary technology to BOPE to design recycle-ready mono-material pouches.
You can achieve these results by combining several solutions from our portfolio:
- ADCOTE™ Barrier Adhesive
- AFFINITY™ Polyolefin Plastomers
- AGILITY™ Performance LDPE
- DOW™ Low Density Polyethylene (LDPE) Resins
- DOWLEX™ Polyethylene Resins
- ELITE™ Enhanced Polyethylene Resins
- FUSABOND™ Functional Polymers
- INNATE™ Precision Packaging Resins
- OPULUX™ Protective Coatings
- RETAIN™ Polymer Modifiers
