Profol adds recyclable pouch to its CPPouch® family of film solutions.

Sustainability continues to drive packaging innovation and simplification. In flexible pouch packaging, there is a push toward highly functional single-material solutions that can be more easily separated and recycled versus multi-material solutions that are prevalent today.

There have been several recent introductions for polyethylene pouch film technology. These products tout the polyethylene pouch as recycle-ready. Though the polyethylene pouch solutions have their place in some packaging, they don’t work well for applications requiring performance attributes that polyethylene can’t meet.

The narrow and mid web packaging format, driven by significant growth in digital printing, has helped lead the way to introducing new stand-up and pillow pouch solutions. With the growth in flexible pouch packaging and advancements of digital printing technology, brand owners are willing to cater to the market trend of individualization, which typically requires shorter print times and multiple label designs for a single product line. Economical, smaller run volumes are one of the key advantages of digital printing. Narrow web converters are realizing that, with a low capital investment, their digital label converting can become package converting.

Profol develops new polypropylene pouch technologies.
To meet market needs, the Profol team worked with collaborative partners to develop two polypropylene CPPouch® solutions that offer differentiated performance attributes versus existing polyethylene solutions.

CPPouch solution: 100% recyclable polypropylene pouch.
Profol introduced a recycle-ready coextruded polypropylene film as part of the CPPouch family of pouch solutions. Besides sustainability, one of the key objectives of this mono-material pouch development was to match the performance of traditional PET/PE laminate in terms of drop test, puncture resistance and moisture barrier.

CPPouch solution: Cast polypropylene sealant web for BOPP/CPP polypropylene pouch.
Profol teamed up with ACPO and Inland Packaging to develop this recycle-ready, polypropylene pouch solution. The pouch consists of a reverse printed BOPP film, and a pressure sensitive adhesive-coated cast polypropylene film. An oxygen barrier coating can be added if needed for the application. For proof of concept, Profol produced the cast polypropylene sealant web with a wide sealing window, ACPO applied the pressure sensitive adhesive to the sealant web, and Inland Packaging reverse printed the BOPP and pressure laminated it to the sealant web to form the final pouch.

Polypropylene pouch value proposition.
These collaborative efforts have produced polypropylene pouch solutions that offer excellent functionality and differentiated performance for the narrow web and traditional pouch markets. In addition to improved sustainability and recyclability, the polypropylene pouch offers operational efficiency, low haze and directional tear advantages versus a polyethylene pouch.

To learn more about Profol and our pouch solutions, please contact us.