Improving wrapping quality
on the market, but now it can offer confectionery producers greater
efficiency and production speed as well.
The Twist-Lyte Hicor produced by ExxonMobil Chemical already claims to be the lightest twist wrap film on the market, but now it can offer confectionery producers greater efficiency and production speed as well.
Twist-Lyte Hicor's special orientation process already gives the film properties for twist-wrap applications that are difficult to reproduce in other films, the company said. "But now we have put an enormous effort into a number of improvements to the films' convertibility and consistency," said Peter Haltenberger, product manager for Hicor and Twist-Lyte.
"On top of this, we have also reduced lead times to three weeks for transparent films and five weeks for metallised versions."
At a thickness of only 23µ, Twist-Lyte is said to have sufficient strength to run at speeds of up to 1400 ppm on modern packaging machines. Its puncture resistance makes it suitable even for demanding applications such as sharp-edged hard candy, the company claimed.
Hicor's stiffness means it can be used on many older packaging machines, which are not designed to work with synthetic materials, and despite some tear strength limitations, it can still run at speeds of up to 1100 ppm.
"Our first priority has been to vastly improve the convertibility of Twist-Lyte," said Haltenberger. "For our metallised films, this means improving the adhesion of the metal and the appearance of the metallised surface. Improvements have also been made to the printability of the metallised surface as well as its stability over time. Finally, for transparent Twist-Lyte, improving the stability and consistency of XH105's surface properties has been our top priority."
He added: "Other enhancement projects are also under way for this range of films - including the possibility of adding a coloured range - which we feel would 'wrap-up' the candy market."
The films business of ExxonMobil Chemical is the world's leading supplier of a full range of oriented polypropylene (OPP) film for flexible packaging and labelling applications.
