Test Center Packaging

Insight view into a pilot plant
Insight view into the Test Center Packaging of the Fraunhofer IVV

Making your packaging processes more efficient and sustainable

Want to replace your current composite materials with new, recyclable or more sustainable alternatives, such as monomaterials? Looking for a realistic material specification? Aiming to improve your understanding of the processing behavior of new materials? Planning to invest in new systems and looking for machines that will continue to meet your requirements in future?

At our test and education center for packaging, we can help you to address these and more questions on ensuring quality, reliability and efficiency in your packaging processes. 

First of all, we’ll work with you to analyze your specific requirements and questions. Based on this analysis, we’ll develop an evaluation matrix tailored to your field of application. This will then form the basis for the next step: using our extensive and modern measurement technology and flexible test facilities to analyze your packaging processes and record the relevant material, process and packaging data. We can also determine the status quo of your systems by carrying out machine inspections.

By linking together the collected information, we can create an overall picture, which can then be used to define concrete decision-making criteria and recommended courses of action, even for complex products. This saves you having to carry out time-consuming and cost-intensive trial-and-error tests when switching to new materials and enables you to make your production processes more efficient and sustainable in future.

 

We’re happy to help!

 

Packaging

There are stringent requirements placed on packaging for food, cosmetics and pharmaceutical products with regard to ensuring the necessary product protection during transport, handling and storage operations, as well as food/product safety in general.

The use of recyclable and paper-based materials, as required by the circular economy, as well as compliance with the sustainability strategies and guidelines required by the market, make it more challenging to produce packaging efficiently and in line with quality standards. As a result, it is also more difficult to achieve the required forming degrees and the necessary quality of sealing seams and cross sectional cuts for pouches or blister packs, for example.

Using special test methods, new and intelligent sealing technologies, as well as analytical processes and the options offered by statistical test planning, we can support you in the development and testing of packaging, the optimization of your packaging processes and the development of new tools.

 

Take advantage of these complex analysis options and benefit from our expertise!

Material

Nowadays, the complex interaction between material and machine is placing new demands on quality-assured production and requires more practically relevant material specifications for improved predictability of the expected material behavior on packaging systems, for example.

Using specially developed inline testing methods, modern sensor technology and a specially developed evaluation method, we can support you in strategically selecting materials for your fields of application, as well as in assessing material suitability and processing behavior for your packaging processes.

This saves you having to carry out the time-consuming and cost-intensive trial-and-error tests that are still common practice. It is now also possible to make efficient use of new material properties, and the accompanying processing properties, in existing machinery.

 

We’ll help you choose materials efficiently and in line with your needs!

Fiber-based packaging

To enable companies to meet the steadily increasing demand for natural fiber-based packaging, the Fraunhofer IVV offers comprehensive support for the complex challenges of material substitution.

With a focus on efficiency, safety and feasibility, the focus is on tasks such as material selection, exploiting different fiber properties for specific requirements, ensuring barrier properties, process and machine design, and mold design.

 

We support you in the implementation of your natural fiber-based packaging solution!

Process- and Maschinen Design

Packaging production methods that are efficient and comply with quality standards can only be achieved by selecting processes, machines and tools that meet all requirements and adapting them to the respective packaging operations. This applies in particular to operations that require a high level of flexibility with regard to different packaging types or processed materials.

We’ll use our expertise and technology to support you in developing an assessment matrix tailored to your specific requirements, identifying necessary requirements and process limits, as well as performing experimental simulations of different approaches and technologies. This will enable you to design your processes and machines in line with the data.

 

We’ll help you develop the perfect process and machine design for you!

Process Optimization

For reliable and efficient production processes, the set process limits - in addition to a precisely fitting process and machine design - are of key importance. In most cases, the specific settings are carried out by the machine operators. However, studies show that certain knowledge is often not transferable between different film types and thicknesses. In addition, other factors such as process, machine, and packaging to be produced play an important role.


We support you in defining appropriate target criteria, identifying relevant influencing factors, and determining the appropriate process window. The data will help you, for example, to increase productivity or to switch to alternative materials.

 

We optimize your packaging processes!