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Flexo-printed all-plastic pet food bags (sidebar)

Gold—Printing AchievementBulk 30-lb all-plastic bags for Lamb & Rice Medley dog food from Nature’s Variety, Lincoln, NE, are made of a three-layer extrusion lamination: 48-ga polyester/43-ga metallized polyester/sealant film layer.

Pw 11979 Nature1

The sealant film layer, supplied by Pliant Corp., is critical to the performance of the overall structure, providing high seal strength, puncture resistance, and high-speed machineability.

Converted and printed by Bryce Corp., the durable gusseted bags with pre-applied recloseable zippers from Zip-Pak are delivered to Nature’s Variety for bottom-filling/sealing operations. The high-gloss bags exhibit exceptional slip resistance and stackability. That feature, along with one-way purge valves that allow air to escape so the bags can flatten, provide enhanced palletizing ease.

The bags bear high-quality flexographic printing, rivaling appearance of generally more expensive rotogravure. They also are printed with environmentally friendly water-based inks.

Scott Freeman of M.I. Industries Inc., Lincoln, NE, parent company of Nature’s Variety, comments, “We needed a good oxygen-barrier bag and the absolute best quality appearance, due to the high-end category we are branding our product in. We are probably paying 10-30 percent higher costs than we did for our previous bag packaging. But our previous bags did not have purge valves, and they caused stacking problems. The new bags stack well because of the non-skid properties and the one-way purge valves. In addition, the structure seems to be stronger, thus eliminating bag-splitting issues. And the new bags just look better in terms of printing and graphics quality.” —Judy Rice

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