Polyethylene Bread Bags
An every day product in a not every day packaging
In everyday life, the packaging of daily bread is normally not a point of discussion as it is only one of the many options for food packaging. Nevertheless, a simple bread bag has an important contribution to the packaging efficiency in the supply chain of bread.
Saving costs, maintaining quality
Bread is packed in all kinds of bags, from clear to pigmented and from unprinted to paper-like printed bags. Bread bag film requires a mix of properties, like impact strength, puncture resistance, optical –, surface and sealing properties. Bread bags should even be “deep freezer” resistant. Next to these, the film should be problem free running on high-speed wicketting lines and bread packing lines.
Bread bags were traditionally made out of higher density LDPE. For costs and performance reasons, the bread bags formulation changed towards LLDPE rich combinations with LDPE. This enabled a significant thickness reduction for cost savings, whilst remaining the stiffness properties of the film. The combinations of LDPE and LLDPE are applied in mono films as well as in co-extruded films. For run ability on high-speed wicketting lines and high-speed bread packing lines, the bread bag film should be sufficient stiff, slippery and “easy open able”.
Grades meeting requirements
SABIC Europe offers the right LDPE and LLDPE grades for bread bag films. SABIC® LLDPE 726Q contains a low amount of antiblock - and a high amount of slip agent, resulting in the required film surface properties. The grade also contains processing aid to secure high throughput on a variety of extrusion lines. SABIC® LLDPE 726Q can be combined with a variety of SABIC® LDPE grades, all containing different combinations of slip- and antiblock-agent.
Specific grades are the SABIC® LDPE 2102TN32, SABIC® LDPE 2602TH33 and the SABIC® LDPE 2201TH12. The combination of SABIC® LLDPE 726Q and one of the SABIC LDPE grades results in down gauge potential, high outputs and to film- and surface properties, perfectly suitable for use in high-speed wicketting lines and bread packing lines. The combination of SABIC® LLDPE 726Q and 20-25% of SABIC® LDPE grades even offers an optimum in optical properties.
