Frozen Food Packaging

Frozen food packaging is a significant market opportunity for flexible films. Recognising this market's positive growth, Borealis has developed a series of plastic material grades that can be used in the outside, inside or core layers of blown film intended for frozen food packaging.

Mechanics of frozen food films

The frozen food packaging film industry is faced with keeping abreast of new consumer trends. Packaging materials must balance toughness, stiffness and mechnical resistance in order to enable increased packaging line speeds. In addition, the materials must allow for easy-opening without comprising good sealing qualities.

Further required properties include:

• tougher film formulations for bigger packages;
• barrier properties (water vapour/light barrier);
• film down-gauging that retains an optimal balance between cost and resource reduction versus acceptable performance;
• superior optical film properties and printability to support an increased focus on marketing and branding;
• balanced surface friction for smooth processing on high speed Form Fill and Seal (FFS) equipment.

In processing films used for frozen food packaging, the films are normally extruded as a blend of polyethylenes (PE) in either mono or co-extrusion. This allows film converters to tailor them precisely to the customer’s needs, whether these are performance-related (e.g. mechanical strength, cost, thickness or stiffness) or marketing-related (e.g. surface gloss, printing or stiffness).

Selecting the right material for frozen food packaging

Our LDPE and Borstar®  plastics grades are ideal materials for the outside, inside or core layers of co-extruded formulations for frozen food packaging.  LDPE products are typically used in the outside layers of blown film, providing the required optical and sealing properties for frozen food applications. 

Our range of Borstar® grades are used in the core layer of the films, offering a combination of excellent processability, final film toughness and best-in-class temperature resistance. The film keeps its toughness even at temperatures of -20°C or -40 °C.