Part 3.5: Pet Food

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Pets have not been immune from the great changes which have happened to their owners’ lifestyles. The demand for time-saving convenience coupled with high quality in terms of nutrition and taste has been much to the benefit of cats and dogs everywhere.

From a zero position two decades ago, alufoil containers have become a major packaging sterilisable format bringing visual appeal, innovation, ease of use and full product protection to the ‘moist’ pet food category. More recently, flexible alufoil laminates have been developed to provide even greater choice through the introduction of sterilisable pouches and cartons.

Brand owners now have a choice of formats to suit the requirements of animals and their owners - of all sizes, breeds and tastes!

Containers or flexible packs – alufoil the ideal material

Barrier

Whether used as a lidded dish or as a thin substrate in a flexible laminate, alufoil provides the essential total barrier needed for long shelf life – to light, gases and contamination.

Heat conductivity

Aluminium is very conductive to heat. This can help minimise cooking, chilling and reheating times. It also evens-out the temperature gradient within its contents, helping product quality and energy economy.

Heat resistance

Foil packs protect their contents through a very wide temperature range. They do not crack, melt, char or burn.

Durability and strength

When stamped into a shaped dish, the aluminium foil ‘work-hardens’ where it is shaped, particularly where the folds and rims occur. Shape, thickness, alloy and temper can be selected to create exactly the performance characteristics required.

Decorative potential

Alufoil’s metallic finish plus compatibility with all printing technologies provides designers with enormous scope to create stunning graphic design and shelf presence.

Lightness and space economy

Economies in both transport and storage result from the foil’s light weight. Compared with open-topped cans, nesting container shapes and alternatively, reeled flexible packaging laminates use the minimum of transport and production space.

Sustainability

Alufoil packaging saves weight and reduces spoilage of sensitive products and so saves energy and material resources. Also, aluminium containers can be recycled at a fraction of their original energy cost. Modern separation techniques allow aluminium foil in household waste to be extracted and recycled. Even in cases where the metal is uneconomic to recover directly, its high energy content can be efficiently recovered in the form of heat.

Applications

Retortable alufoil containers and lids

These represent remarkable success story in pet food packaging. The outcome of close collaboration between container producers and the specialists in inks and coatings, the lidded alufoil dish provides an ideal combination of characteristics. It is compact, attractive in appearance, fully protective yet easy to open and use. The lightness of the metal and the stacking format of the empty container offers space and handling economy during the filling processes. The metallic finish can be enhanced with coloured lacquers and high quality multi-colour printing. Development continues thanks to alloy ‘tailoring’, downgauging and alternative printing techniques designed to being shorter runs coupled with economy without loss of performance. After use, the metal from the used containers can be fully and economically recycled.

Flexible pouches

Retortable ‘stand-up’ pouches are now an everyday packaging format thanks to the perfection of coatings and laminates designed to resist the rigours of autoclave sterilisation. To guarantee the integrity of the product, an alufoil layer is essential for full protection against light and gases. As is the case with the shallow alufoil container, the thin laminate and slim format of the flexible pouch enables heat to penetrate to the whole of the product and also to cool very quickly. This means less overcooked product than is inevitable with traditional cylindrical cans. Pouches, which can of course also be used for non-sterilised dry pet food products, are easy to tear or cut open.

Cartons