TRANSPARENT SOAP BASE (MELT & POUR) AND NOODLE SOAP

Flexible packaging products include candy wrappers, bags for cookies, snack foods, fresh and frozen products, diapers and personal hygiene products, envelopes for powdered soups and juices, flexible bags for ketchup and mayonnaise and for cleaning products such as laundry detergents, labels for beverage bottles, peel-off lids and labels for yogurt containers and wrappers for ice cream products. All of the Company’s products are manufactured in accordance with international requirements and customized to meet individual customer specifications.

Production of flexible packaging products begins in pre-press. The main pre-press process involves the digital design for packaging graphics, including color separation, text and layout. There are two forms of printing: rotogravure and flexography. The rotogravure printing process involves diamond-etching a cylinder for each product’s color layer. It is appropriate for high-quantity orders. Flexographic printing process requires a polymer plate (one for each color) with the design to be printed, that is wrapped around a metallic cylinder.

Traditionally, machinery and equipment requirements for rotogravure printing have been greater than for flexographic printing, and as a result, flexographic printing has been more commonly used. While flexographic printing quality has traditionally been inferior to the rotogravure method in terms of printing clarity and quality, these differences have been diminishing over time as the quality and equipment investments in the flexographic printing method have increased.

Production of flexible packaging products continues by combining the different layers of material(s) required for each particular packaging order; the combination of materials depends on the product’s requirements, such as impermeability, desired shelf life and cost considerations. Flexible packaging products are made from any combination of the following: plastics (such as polypropylene, polyethylene and/or polyester), aluminum foil, paper, wax and adhesives. The most common packaging types are single-layer and multi-layer, coextruded barrier films, doy pack containers and metallized films. Many of the packaging component materials are purchased in film rolls. Due to the high volume of polyethylene used in flexible packaging, this raw material is purchased in pellet form (resin) and extruded at the Company’s facilities into rolls of the appropriate diameter, thickness, width and color for each particular order.

After the printing process, additional laminates and any other necessary layers are attached using adhesives between layers. Finally, the rolls are cut, folded (if necessary) and packaged.

Flexible packaging is the second largest segment in US packaging, accounting for 18% of the industry. It makes sense; this type of product wrap is ubiquitous. Every time you open a bag of chips, squeeze a tube of toothpaste, or get your afternoon caffeine fix from a teabag, you can thank the nearly 79,000 American workers in flexible packaging manufacturing.

The complexity of printing on a flexible substrate is daunting. The sheer variety of materials such as polybags, extruded polyethylene films, overwraps, and rollstock complicate the already challenging process. Schedulers must account for ink changeouts, equipment set-ups, and different cure times. Add to this the normal floor constraints of job deadlines, labor skill-sets needed, and post-processing activities required, and it becomes apparent how much a facility in this industry can improve processes with a robust scheduling tool.