Food for Thought

By Maggie DeWitt

This month’s mystery product will interest both manufacturers and distributors of label products. A development has resulted in a specialty label that creates exciting new sales opportunities within the food industry.

One of only two such products on the market, it has the potential to benefit the pharmaceutical and health-care industries, as well. Use the following clues to guess what the product is:

• It requires FDA approval.

• It is a stock option that yields a value-added substrate.

• It gives distributors a great reason to make contact with customers and prospects in the packaging and distribution sectors.

mystery product revealed

Houston-based Valéron Strength Films has a new, FDA-approved clay coating for its synthetic paper, V-Max, enabling the product to have direct contact with food for identification applications. The FDA-compliant V-Max is used for tag and label applications requiring direct contact with all three food categories—dry cereals, aqueous and fatty foods, including acidic foods. The product may also provide solutions for candy packaging, as well as consumer information and advertising for pharmaceuticals and vitamins.

A high-density polyethylene (HDPE), V-Max is an established product that was introduced in the mid-90s, and is available uncoated and coated, including the new FDA-approved coating option. V-Max is non-smearing, water-resistant, able to withstand subzero temperatures and is fully recyclable as HDPE. V-Max can be easily printed using offset litho, flexography, gravure and screen printing, but it is not suited for laser printers. And, although V-Max is not ideal for four-color process print jobs, the clay coating does allow for improved print quality.

V-Max resists tearing, but is easily die cut, and because it is not mineral-filled, does not fray like other synthetic products. The matte surface is especially suitable for bar-coding, delivering consistent ANSI-A bar code scans. V-Max is easily convertible, and is supplied in rolls and sheets. It can be perforated, stapled and sewn with good results. A United States-based manufacturing source allows the product to lower lead-times for converters, while providing a durable solution for a food-grade tagging substrate.