BARCELONA, Spain -- Traditional cold-seal adhesives for food packaging are applied by patterned gravure. This means for every change in impression length or configuration, a new gravure cylinder must be re-etched. To help eliminate the excess time and cost involved in this process, Ashland Performance Materials, a commercial unit of Ashland Inc., developed a novel synthetic cold-seal adhesive for the European food packaging industry.

Ashlands Pureseal 23322E water-based, cold-seal adhesive can be applied via the flexographic printing process, which means that the cost-intensive etching and re-etching of cylinders can be avoided entirely by using a photopolymer plate. This is of particular importance for shorter, specialized runs in the confectionery bar market.

"A key benefit of this technology is that it provides manufacturers with the opportunity to produce cold-seal flexible packaging on existing narrow-web press equipment," said Stuart May, director of sales, Ashland Performance Materials, Europe, Middle East and Africa. "As with any water-based product, the cold-seal adhesive must be dried before rewinding."

Ashlands Pureseal 23322E cold-seal adhesive can be applied as an overall coat or pattern. It seals packages comprised of biaxially oriented polypropylene (OPP) white OPP, metalized OPP, polyester and other substrates suitable for food packaging. It releases from release-treated films or release lacquer-coated substrates and complies with the relevant U.S. Food and Drug Administration regulations for food packaging.

Ashlands Pureseal 23322E adhesive is also a specially formulated synthetic-based cohesive with no natural rubber components, making the product an ideal choice for medical and protective packaging. Ashlands UV and water-based adhesives and coatings are used in multiple industries and applications including food packaging, labels and tags, commercial printing, protective packaging and graphic arts.

Ashland Performance Materials is the global leader in unsaturated polyester resins and epoxy vinyl ester resins. In addition, it provides customers with leading technologies in gelcoats, pressure-sensitive and structural adhesives.

Source: Ashland