Award-winning optical finishes enables redesigning packaging for recyclability while featuring remarkable heat resistance and exceptional appearance.
Dow (NYSE: DOW) introduces a new optical finishing for polyethylene (PE)-based packaging to support brand owners and converters in addressing recyclability targets. The new OPULUXTM HGT Optical Finishes can help replace PE/PET or PE/BOPP laminated packaging structures with a PE-based concept that offers high thermal and chemical resistance and delivers excellent optics. OPULUXTM HGT, which is suitable for many packaging formats and most common coating and packaging equipment, has been recognized as a breakthrough technology at this year’s Edison Awards in the bronze category.
“We’re constantly looking at ways to re-think the status-quo of packaging to advance the circular economy,” said Izzat Midani, marketing manager EMEA at Dow Packaging and Specialty Plastics. “With OPULUXTM HGT we are able to simplify the packaging structure to help enable recyclability while maintaining the shelf appeal of the final package.”
OPULUXTM HGT is a high-temperature, high-gloss varnish applied to surface-printed PE films of flexible packaging. It allows for broadening the processing window of the films and helps expanding the PE film performance. While replacing laminated substrates like OPET and BOPP in the outer layers with a monoply PE-based film, structure simplification and high conversion efficiency are accomplished. Converters can leave out the lamination step and benefit from a wider coating weight range as well as reduced wash downs.
Coveris, a leading European manufacturer of plastic and paper packaging solutions, is among the early adopters of the new technology. “We strive to balance the functional and sustainability performance of our products to deliver cost-effective solutions that can contribute to both our own sustainability goals and those of our customers,” said Eric Valette, Director of Innovation at Coveris Flexibles France. “Dow’s OPULUXTM HGT Optical Finishes helped us achieve exactly this balance in our pet dry food packaging, allowing us to create a robust and durable solution, convenient to use, with a great shelf appeal and that is viable for existing recycling infrastructures.”
By combining OPULUXTM HGT Optical Finishes with Dow’s innovative PE-based polymer solutions1, brand owners and converters can redesign packaging for recyclability and achieve key packaging properties such as stiffness and dimensional stability, as well as remarkable glossy finishing for excellent packaging appearance on the shelf, heat resistance and a high sealing window for packaging efficiency.
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