FachPack 2024: Walki presents “state-of-the-art” dispersion and sealing solutions
27 Sep 2024 --- At FachPack 2024, we spoke with Walki about its latest innovations in sealing products for F&B packaging and other segments. Presenting new sealing and dispersion technologies, the Finland-based company showed a range of flexible and rigid packaging products that maintain grease-proof properties without plastic materials.
Innova Market Insights pegged “Breakthrough Barriers” as a top trend for 2024, noting that barrier coatings are a key focus in almost every part of the industry.
“Notably, the movement away from plastics and toward fiber-based solutions has led to the challenge of replicating grease and moisture protection and shelf life without using plastic,” according to the market researcher.
Speaking to Packaging Insights on the show floor, Walki’s technical service and development manager Karolina Ciesielska explains the company’s Walki Jazz product is designed to provide a dispersion coating for takeaway food packaging without using traditional PE-based material.
“Walki Jazz is board with dispersion coating. It has excellent recyclability, and it also has good water and grease barrier properties. It can be applied to various types of materials.”
The Walki Jazz fast food packaging.“This is designed especially for takeaway food packaging like hamburger wraps, but it can also be applied to the different materials for different end uses. I would say this is definitely a state-of-the-art solution, because it's a more sustainable solution than a polymer coating. Demand for Walki Jazz is growing.”
Walki Evo Seal and Fiber Wraps
Another solution on display was the Walki Evo Seal product. Launched around five years ago, it is part of a family of products designed for a range of consumer products in the frozen food and snack sector.
“For this particular product, we use sealable coatings. We also use a stripe, so another layer of paper, to reinforce the upper part of the packaging, and to protect the packaging against tearing,” explains Ciesielska.
“It can be used for snacks as well, because we can apply the barrier against oxidation, for example.”
Showcasing a non-food application, the Walki Fiber Wrap, Ciesielska says the company tries to tie all its packaging designs together under the same non plastic principles, regardless of the applications.
“This is another sibling solution to the Evo Seal and Walki Jazz products, and is dedicated more to packaging industrial goods. So for this product no grease or moisture barrier is needed like with F&B products, but the simple sealability qualities need to be maintained,” she says.
“Ultimately, all of these products are very similar. The one common idea for all those three we choose to talk about is the use of the dispersion coating as a replacement for the conventional polymer coated products.”
By Louis Gore-Langton, with reporting from Natalie Schwertheim
