Seven FSSAI labelling mistakes that delay product launches
Labelling errors rarely stop a formulation, but they routinely stop a launch. Here are the seven we correct most often before a pack goes to print.
Read the article →Water vapour transmission rate and oxygen transmission rate describe how much moisture and oxygen pass through a packaging film in a given time. They are the technical basis for almost every shelf-life claim on a packaged food, and they are routinely ignored in favour of price per kilogram.
Start from the failure mode
Identify what actually ends your product's life. A biscuit fails on moisture pickup, so WVTR dominates. A roasted nut fails on oxidation, so OTR dominates. A fried snack usually fails on both. Specifying a high-barrier structure for a product that fails on neither is wasted money.
Match the number to the shelf life
Given the product's critical moisture or oxygen limit, its weight, the pack surface area and the target shelf life, the required transmission rate can be calculated rather than guessed. This calculation takes an hour and prevents both over-specification and the far more expensive under-specification.
Structures in ascending barrier order
- Monolayer polyethylene or polypropylene: low barrier, low cost, short shelf life.
- Metallised polyester laminates: good moisture and light barrier at moderate cost - the workhorse for Indian snacks.
- EVOH-containing structures: strong oxygen barrier, recyclable-friendly in mono-material designs.
- Aluminium foil laminates: near-absolute barrier, highest cost, and the hardest to recycle.
Remember that seals fail before films do
A perfect structure with a contaminated or under-heated seal has no barrier at all. In shelf-life investigations, seal integrity is the cause far more often than film permeability. Include seal strength and leak testing in your incoming and in-process checks.
Test in the pack, at real conditions
Datasheet values are measured at standard temperature and humidity, usually 38 degrees and 90 percent RH for WVTR. Your warehouse may be worse. Run the shelf-life study in the finished pack, sealed on your machine, at conditions that reflect your actual supply chain.
Sustainability changes the maths
Moving to recyclable mono-material structures generally costs barrier performance. That is manageable, but it has to be planned - re-validate shelf life before switching, and be prepared to adjust either the date on the pack or the formulation.