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Biopolymer tray for refrigerated ready meals

Excelline Foods launched its new ready meals by installing a thermoforming machine and feeding it a forming web lamination whose core layer is a corn-based biopolymer.

Pw 43665 Excellin1

Excelline Foods of Chatsworth, CA, is a big believer in fresh, refrigerated foods, says vice president of sales and marketing Noel Bonn.


“We believe the way to the future with food is fresh,” says Bonn. “Across the Atlantic they’ve been doing a great job with it where ready meals are concerned. They see that the frozen food items are starting to dwindle or be eliminated from the retail mix altogether while fresh offerings are growing. We think that’s going to be the trend in the U.S., too, over the next decade or so.”


In January of this year Excelline launched a whole new brand of refrigerated prepared foods called Comida del Sol. Bonn calls the line a significant step up from the frozen “gut fillers” currently out there.


The packaging materials used for Comida del Sol are also intriguing. For both the flautas and the burrito items, the forming web is Plantic eco Plastic high-barrier material from Plantic Technologies. It’s made using a corn crop that is specifically grown for Plantic Technologies Ltd. The whole of the harvested crop is used and Plantic uses the extracted starch to make its biopolymer packaging material; the byproduct goes to animal food and fertilizer. Due to a highly efficient conversion rate, says Plantic, there is minimal crop space required, and the crop has no impact on food-growing land space requirements. The firm’s patented polymer technology is based on the use of high-amylose corn starch, a material derived from annual harvesting of specialized non-genetically modified (hybrid) corn and supplied by Corn Products International. The biopolymer is comparable in cost to other conventional plastic packaging materials, says Plantic.


Plantic eco Plastic consists of a core layer that is extruded in a conventional manner. Laminated to this core layer are skin layers of polyethylene (largely for heat-sealing purposes) and polypropylene (for moisture barrier). Total thickness in the Excelline Foods application is 450 microns, and of that, 410 microns is the Plantic material at the core. The Oxygen Transmission Rate, says Plantic, is less than 0.05 CC/sq m/24 hr at 23°C.

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