Up, Up, and Away

Some of the configurations are customized from a common material base. Kearny notes that a very common configuration for pouches is a 48-guage oriented polyester (OPET) laminated to a polyethylene (PE) film. From here, the gauge of the PE film can be changed to accommodate different pouch sizes.

Further modifications can be made from this base to meet additional needs. “Sometimes additional stiffness is built into the pouch through the use of stiffer PE resins,” says Kearny. “Additional barriers can be added through the use of a third ply of film such as metallized OPET or OPP [oriented polypropylene], or the substitution of a standard PE sealant with a coextruded sealant that contains barrier resins.”