Innovative transparent barrier for packaging

The trend towards transparent barrier coatings for flexible packaging gains momentum. Product visibility is a powerful marketing tool. Vacuum coated transparent barrier film has been pushed forward during the last years mainly by electron beam evaporation technology with equipment installations in Japan and Europe. But as the investment cost for electron beam web coaters is high, and also as most metalizing companies are not familiar with this process, the number of running electron beam web coaters, compared to the number of Al metallizers using boats, is low. To use this basic technology of standard Al evaporation from boats also for the production of transparent barrier layers was a dream since many years. With a new development based on the combination of an innovative plasma-technology with standard Al evaporation from boats, transparent barrier coatings with outstanding barrier performance and optical clarity on BOPP and PET films have been achieved. Since 2008 within an adapted roll-to-roll machine the new process is running for production.