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Consumers are continuously changing their eating and purchasing behavior. A century ago, food was bought fresh and directly from the source - the farmer, butcher, and baker. Nothing was packaged, it was simply wrapped in paper. Today our daily food requirements have changed dramatically to match our lifestyle. We buy food in a supermarket, often some distance from our homes, and transport it.
Food packaging protects the integrity of the product and makes all of this possible. These days we can store food for months in and even out of the refrigerator, and when we decide to eat it, we want it to taste as fresh as the day it was produced.
An innovative technology provides an SiOx (silicon oxide) coating that offers the conditions for a high-barrier layer against moisture, gas, and aromas. In this way, food products can be kept fresh for a longer period.
Why Do We Need Barriers in Packaging Products?
Barriers prevent interchanging actions between packed food products and their environment (see Figure 1 ). This can be anything from dust, contamination, light, mechanical impact, gas, and moisture to aromas. The food product itself also may influence its direct environment when it is spicy or contains essential oils or aggressive ingredients.
Packaging materials can provide these necessary barriers and protect and preserve our food, but all have their specific properties. Glass is transparent and is an excellent barrier material, but it's less good against light, and it breaks under high impact. Aluminium foil is a very good barrier against moisture, gases, contamination, and light, but it provides very little protection against mechanical impact and is very brittle.
Plastic films are very flexible and offer medium protection against moisture, gases, and aromas. However, consumers expect not only product protection from packaging, they want to see the food they buy; they want it to be safe to eat; they want it to stay fresh for a longer period; and above all, they want it to be tasty.
Furthermore, the consumer demands certain convenience properties of the packaging, i.e., it must be easy to transport and easy to open. All these requirements should be combined in one-and-the-same packaging.