Enviro-friendly candy pack attracts

Award: Gold for Environmental Achievement

Winner: Malto Bella confectionery pouch (Northern Flair Foods)

The sophisticated, standup pouch adopted by Northern Flair Foods for its Malto Bella Gourmet Malt Balls represents an environmentally-friendly use of nonvolatile inks and adhesives and, at the same time, provides improved bond strength and functionality. But to the consumer eye, it's the graphics that really give the yummy confection its marketing panache.

Replacing a package printed in three or four line colors, the new 5-ounce pouch displays stunning graphics through the use of water-based inks and an adhesive said to eliminate odors and retain solvents while using renewable resources.

Converted by C&H Packaging (www.chpack.com) using the prepress services of Southern Graphic Systems (www.sgsintl.com), the Gold Winner in Environmental Achievement features a highly-opaque pouch substrate created with white inks from Sun Chemical (www.sunchemical.com) that provide a superior print surface for the brown, metallic gold, amber and chocolate-toned graphic color scheme that communicates the malt balls' rich chocolate and toffee flavors. The inks bond well to the three-ply laminated pouch film construction, which C&H says includes uncoated polyesters from Toray Plastics (America) (www.toraytpa.com) Cel-Met metallized PET from Celplast and a proprietary sealant.

C&H finds that the CelMet also provides superior adhesion properties that assist in improving bond strengths with the nonvolatile adhesives. The lamination for the gusseted, standup pouch is constructed using both water-based and solventless adhesives. "Historically, there have been issues getting water-based inks to bond to uncoated polyesters," relates Keith Smith at C&H. "But we use nonvolatile inks and adhesives to provide environmental and performance improvements at lower costs using uncoated polyesters." Smith adds that C&H's printing and laminating processes used to convert the pouch involve no emissions.

The converter reverse-prints the uncoated PET web in seven colors on a Windmöeller & Hoelscher flexo press and laminates it to the metallized PET before mating that lamination to a sealant on a Kroenert (www.kroenert.com) laminator and slitting the material into rollstock. The rollstock is made into pouches on a Totani pouchmaking system.