Nowadays, quality safety problems are frequently reported. Main reasons for these problems lie in manufacturing, logistics, consuming and even managing processes. To a great degree, product quality safety is closely related with the package used. Use safety of packed content depends on many factors including packaging materials, construction design of package, processing and manufacturing of package, and packaging logo. In daily life, close correlations between packaging material and packed content has been known by the public.
CONVEN provides professional packaging safety solution for companies from the perspective of packaging material.
Caking, moisture absorption and deliquescence are common quality problems, especially for food and pharmaceuticals. Such problems may affect the quality of packed content, or even cause deterioration and erosion to shorten the product shelf life. These problems can happen to many products, including brown sugar, white sugar, salt, milk powder, soybean milk powder, coffee, tea powder, chicken extract, biscuit, melon seeds, nuts, protein powder, granule, chemical reagent powder, etc.
High hygroscopicity and high solubility of packed content account for the caking, moisture absorption, and deliquescence of above mentioned products. In high humidity condition, such products may absorb moisture, and get dissolved, deliquesced, and caked. Packed content exposes to the affect of moisture and humidity due to itself and its external package.
1. Factors of packed content itself that cause these problems may include improper prescription and unsuitable processing technique. For example, the packed content may contain excessive moisture absorbing gradient, be dried incompletely, or packed without desiccant packets.
2. Packaging factors that cause these problems may include inappropriate protective function of package, resulting in the transmission of water vapor into package. Common quality problems of external package include:
1) Poor barrier property. For example, if the water vapor resistance of packaging material is poor, ambient water vapor may gradually transmit into the package during long term storage.
2) Poor seal performance. For example, water vapor may transmit into package from sealing area if the heat seal is not proper, or the water vapor may transmit into package from the sealing leakage caused in sterilization due to low high temperature resistance of packaging material.
3) Low physical and mechanical performance. For example, if packaging material is low in flexibility and puncture resistance to packed content, or low in flex resistance and compression resistance, there may be pinholes or crease appeared on package during storage or transport, even the package may break. If such problems are not discovered in time, the packed content may become caked or deliquesced when contacting with ambient water vapor.
Packed content factor can be solved by manufacturer and distributor. As to the manufacturer, production process shall be strictly controlled. For example, according to the performance test result of packaging material, properly adjust the moisture content, and improve drying method and other production procedures. Besides, during storage and logistics, temperature and humidity conditions around shall be controlled.
As to the packaging, CONVEN provides a complete packaging safety solution. From the quality control of purchased packaging material, CONVEN helps to select suppliers and improve packing processing techniques, aiming to prevent any caking, moisture absorption, and deliquescence of packed content due to packaging quality problems. The solution consists of:
1) Barrier property. For example, water vapor transmission rate test can be performed to determine whether barrier property of packaging material meets the requirements of packed content.
2) Seal performance. For example, by conducting seal and leak test, and burst pressure test, leaking problem as well as leaking position can be detected in time, if any, and the area of package with low mechanical strength can be positioned. Besides, heat seal strength test can determine whether heat seal strength meets requirements of packed content, and find out where the heat sealing is not proper.
3) Physical and mechanical performance. For example, tensile strength and elongation rate at break, puncture resistance, pendulum impact resistance, peel resistance, etc, test of which respectively or in combination can be used to evaluate whether the physical and mechanical performance such as flexibility, puncture resistance and flex resistance of package can meet the requirements of packing and transport.
Through the above mentioned performance tests, quality control of packaging material can be generally achieved, and thus caking, moisture absorption, and deliquescence of packed content due to inferior quality of packaging material can be avoided.
Consisting of high precision intelligent testing instruments developed by Labthink, CONVEN Information System, and complete solutions for testing, diagnosis, quality analysis and quality control, CONVEN is a consulting packaging test service system, and has profound social value in respect of cost saving of plastic flexible packages consuming companies, product quality improving, food and pharmaceuticals safety guaranteeing.
