The Active, Smart Future of Packaging

Food packaging helps contain, protect, preserve, distribute, and describe all types of food from fresh to highly processed, from harvest site to family pantry. These benefits to food were on prominent display in scientific presentations and exhibits at IFT15.

Packaging: Smart and Active 
Americans annually consume an average of more than 10 pounds of bananas per capita, but spoilage that occurs between banana plantations and local consumers wastes much more. The side-chain crystallizable polymer (SCCP) intelligent packaging technology of Landec Inc., Menlo Park, Calif. (landec.com), works to delay deterioration of an imported product on its way through the food supply chain into the homes and eating places of the United States and other countries. This fresh fruit-package partnership extends shelf life, delivers better quality in traditional markets, and opens up new markets because it gives predictability to the banana distribution system. SCCP materials respond to temperature changes by adjusting their molecular form in ways that change the permeation rate of environmental gases into and out of banana bags. The company brands its SCCP intelligent packaging technology as BreatheWay membranes. The membranes manage all gas transfer requirements for the package, allowing more flexibility in material structure for the balance of the package in meeting shipping or merchandising specifications. Landec customizes each package solution for the product, pack size, and a seamless fit to a client’s existing equipment. Its highly customized, cost-effective packaging solutions add value to products via reduced product shrinkage, less waste, and extended shelf life. 

Eva Almenar, an associate professor at Michigan State University, discussed potential future smart packaging materials. She described her research on water regulation of packaged fresh produce, using metal organic framework (MOF) sachets in hermetically sealed packages of fresh produce. The MOF sachet materials (for example, aluminum terephthalate and 2-methylimidazole zinc, distributed by BASF, Kankakee, Ill. (basf.com), as the Basolite product family, have higher surface area, lower desorption energy reversibility, and better water stability than materials previously considered for scavenging volatiles (e.g., zeolite, silica, activated carbon, and alumina). The specific shape and spacing of MOFs allows matching them to target molecules for scavenging from packaging headspace. MOF research at Rutgers University takes a different approach. There, researchers load appropriate MOFs with natural antimicrobial substances (in this case, essence of wasabi). Temperature treatment releases the active antimicrobial essence from sachets of the loaded MOFs when needed in a packaged product. The University of Florida’s research on active packaging has taken on a new dimension. Its researchers demonstrated the feasibility of continuously monitoring ambient oxygen and carbon dioxide levels in hermetically sealed shipping containers of fresh produce. They adjusted observed levels to desired ones using compressed oxygen and carbon dioxide gas sources—a sort of closed-loop biological gas-ostat. 

In July 2014 Multisorb Technologies, Buffalo, N.Y. (multisorb.com), launched a cost-effective solution for extending the shelf life of meat jerky products: JerkyFresh oxygen absorbing packets. The specific design of JerkyFresh packets keeps meat jerky products with water activity levels of less than 0.85 fresher longer than atmospheric, gas flushing, and vacuum packaging alone. Multisorb’s market leader for North America food and beverage packaging, Bob Sabdo, estimates that the majority of U.S. meat jerky products use this kind of scavenger technology for both consumer packaging and business-to-business shipments. 

The IFT15 food expo provided dynamic insight into the need for elegant packaging solutions for the business of delivering ingredients to food processors. International Paper Co., Memphis, Tenn. (internationalpaper.com), exhibited SpaceKraft totes as a replacement for drums, returnable bottle-in-cage, and eight-sided corrugated intermediate bulk containers (IBCs). With a capacity of up to 330 gallons of liquid, one SpaceKraft Liquids IBC can do the job of up to six drums, reducing the time and labor required for filling, emptying, and handling multiple containers. As a replacement for returnable totes, SpaceKraft eliminates the high maintenance and return transportation costs. The aseptic version uses a bag liner fabricated from a barrier film structure, and sterilizes it using gamma radiation. International Paper ships the SpaceKraft IBC knocked down flat—saving up to 80% of trailer and warehouse space required for some rigid IBCs or drums. One person can assemble it at the filling location in about a minute. Steam sterilizes the filling/dispensing valve at the bottom of the container before filling. The corrugated sleeve uses renewable fiber sourced entirely through the Sustainable Forestry Initiative certified procurement system. 

Fluid-Bag, Jakobstad, Finland (fluid-bag.com), displayed its cost-efficient flexible IBCs for liquid and semi-liquid products, such as fruit preparations, vegetable or berry concentrates, and bakery fillings. Featuring airtight systems that protect products and prevent contamination, the bags can be used for external and internal logistics and to contain highly viscous products. 

On the opposite end of ingredient to processor delivery needs, Monosol, Merrillville, Ind. (monosol.com), introduced its water soluble and edible packaging film, Vivos. The material delivers premeasured amounts of ingredients to processors and foodservice operations. Sumeet Kumar, MonoSol’s senior manager of strategic marketing, commented that the company’s “extensive R&D process in creating the film used in laundry detergents is testimony to thinking outside the box where we delivered new products that are unique and cost effective. We expanded that mindset and have now developed the technology for the food and beverage industries.” The company offers the convenience and efficiency of dish and laundry pod packages to food processing and preparation environments. In such environments, language and math skills may not measure up to the needs and dynamics of the operations. Operators simply add premeasured amounts of ingredients in food-grade ink labeled pouches (e.g. words, graphics, and/or colors) to their preparations. This so-called batch-inclusion packaging concept has found widespread application in preparing polymeric formulations. Here, operators toss specialty polymers packaged in commodity polymer bags directly into mixers and reaction vessels in predetermined whole-bag ratios in order to make full lot sizes. MonoSol envisions future applications of the concept in consumer-sized pouches of dried products ready for reconstitution in water. 

The Integration of Packaging and Processing 
The integration of packing and food processing enjoys a long history at the Institute of Food Technologists. The Nicolas Appert Award celebrates the French inventor of canning. The Samuel Cate Prescott Award celebrates the food scientist who reduced the Appert art of canning to the science of thermal sterilization of low-acid foods. The packaging/processing combination of those 19th century pioneers has continued with recent technology awards from IFT. Two of these had prominent exposure on the food expo floor.

Morrisville, N.C.–based Industrial Microwave Systems (industrialmicrowave.com) showed its continuous microwave sterilization process, which won the 2009 IFT Food Technology Industrial Achievement Award. North Carolina State University’s Dept. of Food Science created Aseptia Inc., Raleigh, N.C. (aseptia.com), to further commercialize the technology, and Aseptia has taken bold steps to bring the technology to the market. The company has established Wright Foods, Troy, N.C. (wrightfoods.com), a licensee of the novel patented technology, to provide contract production of shelf-stable products that maintain the flavor and nutritional content of fresh food without the use of preservatives or refrigeration. For distribution, the pumpable aseptic products use packaging systems by SIG Combibloc, Neuhausen am Rheinfall, Switzerland (sig.biz); Sealed Air, Hodgkins, Ill. (sealedair.com); and Effytec, De Pere, Wis. (effytecusa.com). Beyond contract processing and packaging, Aseptia has expanded into the fabrication and sale of turnkey plug-and-play systems with space requirements as small as 12 ft x 3 ft x 6 ft. Fruit and vegetable items dominate current commercial products, but a shelf-stable dairy product may soon be among them.

The Microwave Assisted Thermal Sterilization (MATS) process at AmeriQual, Evansville, Ind. (ameriqual.com), now has “no objection” status from the Food Safety and Inspection Service of the U.S. Dept. of Agriculture (USDA). The technology, which won the 2010 IFT Research and Development Award, offers commercial-scale processing equipment for pouch and lidded-tray package formats. Researchers at the U.S. Army Natick Soldier Research, Development, and Engineering Center, Natick, Mass. (nsrdec.natick.army.mil), presented experimental results in their quest to define nonfoil barrier packaging to provide four-year storage life for MRE combat rations processed with MATS technology.

IFT held a scientific session on new concepts for pasteurization of low-moisture foods. Although the presentations received standing-room-only attendance, the speakers made no mention of the role of packaging in maintaining product purity in distribution and storage. The Almond Board of California reported that steam sterilization methods meet the U.S. Food and Drug Administration’s requirements for mandatory treatment (a minimum four-log reduction of natural almonds inoculated with Salmonella Enteritidis PT 30) while maintaining the USDA Organic Program’s standards. Typically, packaging materials manufactured and filled using good manufacturing practices maintain the product’s safety and quality.

The Food Packaging Division and Nonthermal Processing Division provided novel technology reviews in a joint scientific session. Carole L. Tonello of Hiperbaric SA, Burgos, Spain (hiperbaric.com), reviewed the number of commercial nonthermal food processing installations around the world: 200 companies utilize high pressure processing; six European companies use pulsed electric field technology to sterilize fruit juices; numerous companies make use of microfiltration for liquids without solids; and many companies irradiate foods.

Over the past 30 years, plastic containers, both rigid and flexible, are replacing glass bottles and metal cans. The 100th anniversary of the contoured Coca-Cola bottle provided the occasion for assessing the fate of other iconic packages during that period. And the company recently announced that a 100% biosourced plastic bottle would replace the current edition of the polyethylene terephthalate plastic bottle.

Thomas Dunn, a member of IFT, is managing director of Flexpacknology LLC, Atlanta, Ga. ([email protected]).