UFlex Limited, India’s leading multinational in flexible packaging materials and solutions, and polymer sciences, continues to take steps to reach closer to its customer base. The company has commissioned its BOPET film manufacturing plant in the Ogun State of Nigeria with a production capacity of 45,000 TPA. Spread over 37 acres, the plant houses first-of-its-kind 10.6 meter wide BOPET film line in Africa and also has two Metallizers with a total production of 15000 TPA. The plant has created over 200 direct jobs, is set to cater to the packaging film demand coming from the fast-growing economy of Nigeria, ECOWAS (Western Africa) and USA.
In the quarter July-August-September 2021, UFlex also added a fleet of new value-added products & solutions products to its portfolio that not just help its customers’ products stand out on the retail shelves but also helps brands extend an overall elevated packaging and consumption experience.
Flexible Packaging solutions
The flexible packaging business of UFlex has developed a heavy-duty mono-material bag for Danish brand KIMS for its snacks packaging segment for the European market. The high-barrier packaging is made of mono-material under polypropylene extreme and bears recyclable ‘logo 5’ mark enabling easy recycling in the existing polypropylene recycling streams while ensuring that the snack packed remains fresh as ever. These snack packs are being used by KIMS to pack food products such as chips, wafers etc.
Another recent development by UFlex included a new MOPE/PE recyclable structure with registered matt coating and special PE mono-Polymer based laminate film for EBRO rice brand Peacock. The newly developed structure for rice packaging possesses similar mechanical and other properties allowing easy recyclability of PE in conventional extruder and can be easily run on existing packaging line with minor adjustments. This development has cleared all tests related to handling, post filling of the pack content, and has successfully fulfilled required barrier properties throughout the defined shelf life of the packed rice.
Frozen food segment that has experienced a steady growth since the pandemic as people have been gravitating towards foods with longer shelf lives. Frozen and refrigerated food needs a special barrier structure to pack the food content such that it doesn’t lose it integrity even months after opening it. Customising the requirement for the brand Milky Mist, UFlex has developed a three-side sealed pouch packaging structure to pack Asal Coin Parota through use of a special high barrier PET film that increases the barrier properties by 50% under ambient conditions and allows the parota to stay fresh for a longer duration.
For pet food segment, UFlex has developed two packaging sizes of 3kg and 12kg to pack pet food for the brand Fidele. Its packaging structure comprises of specialized Matt finished PET polyester and its pocket slider allows reclose-ability thereby adding to consumer’s convenience. The side gusset handle in the 3kg variant helps easy carrying and pouring whereas the 12kg variant comes with bottom pinch pasting allowing multi-dimensional display thus helping the brand to leverage as much branding opportunity as it can and make it stand out on the retail shelves.
Other solutions include a transparent high-barrier laminate to pack 26gms of Gold Standard Dairy Whitener for Namaste India Foods. The packaging structure allows the brand owner to showcase the product through a see-through window and at the same time provide the barrier required for packaged dairy whitener.