Versatile Copolyester Resin Ideal for Food, Beverage and Personal Care Packaging

29/05/07 Eastman Chemical B.V. has announced the European availability of films made with Embrace LV, a new halogen-free copolyester resin for shrink film labels for packaged consumer goods. With better balanced shrinkage and physical characteristics previously unavailable in copolyester product offerings, Embrace LV is a single resin solution for shrink labels for the food, beverage and personal care markets.

For brand owners, films made from Embrace LV offer clarity, gloss and strong performance for an array of complex bottle designs. Compared to films made with other copolyester resins in the market, they exhibit up to a 50 percent reduction in shrink force with no machine direction (MD) shrinkage, eliminating "smiley face" and other distortions that detract from packaging appearance. The low shrink force also makes it a very good choice for thinner-walled containers, helping companies reduce material consumption.

"Embrace LV meets brand owner demand for shrink films that provide high-quality, 360 degree billboard-effect advertising on their bottles," said Hans Warmerdam, market development manager, Shrink Film and Food and Beverage Containers at Eastman in Europe. "Its high ultimate shrinkage coupled with a gradual shrink curve ensures optimum design flexibility for beautiful packaging with excellent finish and graphics."

Easy to handle and print, label printers can benefit from the wide application coverage offered by films made with Embrace LV.

The combination of high free shrinkage, gradual shrink curve and low shrink force makes for a versatile product. For example, the material offers Eastman's extrusion partners the opportunity to custom design shrink curves to meet the specific needs of the end user. It can be run in a variety of different shrink tunnels for optimum design flexibility.

"The versatility of Embrace LV gives us the option to meet our wide-ranging customer needs, including traditional high-shrink applications with few design defects and distortions," said Tom Kudo, director of sales and marketing at Bonset America Corporation, a leading producer of heat shrinkable film. "Embrace LV also produces a clearer film, which is so important for high-end applications such as spirits and cosmetics."

Also impressed with the resin’s performance and design capabilities, Klöckner Pentaplast, a global leader in manufacturing shrink label films used for full-body shrink sleeves, has begun marketing films made with Embrace LV in Europe.

"Films made with Embrace LV are much easier to use and process, providing our customers with one film for a multiple types of machinery and applications," said Jens-Peter Schumann, business manager for performance films at Klöckner Pentaplast. "Less sensitive to heat than competing materials such as OPS, these films also have longer storage shelf life, which will be essential to our European customers as we enter the hot summer months."