With the continuous development of society, fast food has met the needs of people’s accelerating pace of life. However, the exposed food safety scandals have stimulated people’s nerves, and the issue of food safety has increasingly become the focus of attention. The main function of packaging is to protect and beautify the goods, so that it is easy to store, transport and use, and the performance of packaging materials that directly contact with the food is particularly important for food safety. With rapid development of the packaging industry, flexible packaging materials (including film, composite film, paper-plastic aluminum, etc.) are gradually replacing the original transportation, mouth sealing and other advantages of the original glass, metal and other materials, and gradually occupy the first place in food packaging materials. At the same time its quality control problems are also more and more concerned by manufacturers. Labthink, as an excellent provider of testing instruments and testing services, continues to provide the best and most comprehensive quality control solutions for customers in the field of food packaging. The following is an introduction of several Labthink testing items for flexible packaging materials.:

1, Flexible Packaging Performance Testing for Oxygen Permeability, Water Vapor Permeability, Solvent Residue, Oxygen Residual, etc.

The deterioration of food is mainly caused by microbial contamination and oxidation deterioration. Therefore, in addition to the quality problems of food itself, the oxygen and moisture permeability of packaging materials would directly affect the shelf life of food. Labthink VAC-V2 Differential Pressure Gas Permeability Tester and W3/062 Water Vapor Permeability Tester independently developed and produced by Labthink, realize high precision automatic testing through powerful software functions, and meet the quality control requirements of the industry for these two testing items, i.e., OTR and WVTR. Both instruments use the international top core components to ensure the test accuracy, and users can complete the monitoring of oxygen transmission and humidity transmission parameters without purchasing expensive instruments.

In addition, Labthink C650H Headspace Analyzer, with its professional sampler, can effectively solve the packaging headspace and residual oxygen analysis issues, and is suitable for the determination of oxygen, carbon dioxide gas content, mixing ratio in the sealed package. The instrument is suitable for rapid and accurate evaluation of the content and proportion of gas ingredients in production lines, laboratories and other occasions, guiding the production and ensuring the shelf life of products. The application scope includes food packaging, milk powder packaging, bread, meat packaging, etc., which is welcomed by the industry with high efficiency, high precision and high service life.

2, Mechanical Testing of Flexible Packaging

Labthink XLW Auto Tensile Tester automatically tests with computer. Its LCD screen displays menu interface. The operator only needs to choose the corresponding test item, and the instrument will automatically complete tensile force, elongation, heat sealing strength, tearing strength, peeling strength, elastic modulus, constant extension stress and other detection of materials. The software has powerful analysis function, which can be used for secondary analysis and superposition comparison. In addition, with the professionally designed fixture, this powerful tensile tester can also detect the packaging cover tearing force of jelly cups, instant noodle packaging boxes, puncture resistance and other products.

3, Sealing Performance Testing of Flexible Packaging

Poor sealing performance is the main cause of packaging leakage and pollution, and the sealing performance has a great impact on food safety, and is an important index of packaging testing. Labthink C660B Leak Tester uses vacuum principle, that is, under the national-required pressure to maintain for the predetermined time, visually observe if the test process occurs leakage, and then determine the rationality of packaging sealing process.

4, Thickness Testing for Flexible Packaging Material

The core factor why flexible packaging film material replaces glass or metal packaging materials is that it can achieve high barrier performance almost similar to glass or metal packaging, and at the same time has the advantages of light weight that glass or metal packaging does not have. In order to ensure the uniformity and stability of film materials, strict quality control of their thickness is required. Micrometer or point contact type thickness meter is far from meeting the food industry requirements for the thickness measurement of packaging materials. According to GB/T 6672 and corresponding international standards, measurement must be conducted by mechanical surface contact measurement. At present, domestic product that can meet the requirements is Labthink C640 Thickness Tester. The tester uses mechanical contact measurement principle, using high precision of displacement sensor, scientific structure layout and professional control technology, to ensure that 0.1um high resolution, automatic sample feeding system function, all of which fully meet the customer needs for their high precision and high efficiency test requirements.

Of course, besides ensuring that the food packaging barrier property, sealing, thickness and other indexes, it is necessary to monitor some other parameters such as color fastness, packaging material impact resistance, to ensure the quality of products during shelf life. For more information about testing instruments, please log on the website of Labthink, www.labthink.com, to view the specific information, or call 0531-85068566 to consult us. Labthink is willing to take this opportunity to enhance communication and cooperation with you.