03/02/25
Meat, fish, and dairy represent some of the most demanding applications in food packaging. Strict requirements for product protection, shelf-life extension, and food safety compliance mean these markets require sophisticated packaging solutions that maintain product freshness while ensuring consumer convenience.
Product protection is of utmost importance. These protein-rich products require exceptional barrier properties to prevent oxygen and moisture ingress, which can significantly impact product quality and shelf life. When oxygen and water permeate a packaging structure and directly interact with proteins, they cause them to degrade and their nutritional value to rapidly decline. In the case of oxidation, the barrier characteristics of the packaging structure help retain essential amino acids and biological activity of the protein. Similarly, moisture loss out of the pack results in drying and undesirable changes in texture of protein-rich foods. Effective control of exposure to oxygen and managing moisture can significantly extend the time a protein-rich product can be safely stored, by as much as 20 days or more in the case of red meats. Enhanced longevity provides benefits for the supply chain and consumer alike, increasing stock availability and freshness.
Safety and security are other essentials, with packaging needing to maintain integrity throughout its passage through the supply chain and to resist punctures and tears that will render barrier properties redundant. Likewise, secure sealing is essential to prevent oxygen, water and other undesirables leaking in and out of a pack. This is essential to maintaining product freshness, particularly for Modified Atmosphere Packaging (MAP) applications where work has gone into creating a stable environment best suited to the product at hand. This must happen all the while packs pass through supply chains and encounter various temperature conditions during processing and storage.
Manufacturing efficiency is equally critical in today's high-speed production environments. Meat packing line speeds have been on the rise in recent years, as food manufacturers look to make the most of their manufacturing footprint and respond to increasing consumer demand. The evolution of increasingly sophisticated and automated lines make packaging’s performance at these higher speeds imperative to the successful packing of livestock, poultry and other protein-rich products.
Consumers also expect to be able to see products and visually confirm their quality. This is especially true in the cost-driven, value-orientated market that exists today. This makes crystal-clear packaging essential in effective retailing of for meat, fish and dairy products and to show consumers that the products they are buying are in optimum condition and not spoiled by oxidation or bacterial growth. For this, packaging must maintain clarity throughout the product's shelf life, with anti-fog properties for chilled products ensuring optimal visibility.
VSP/MAP
All of this has seen Vacuum Skin Packaging (VSP) grow in popularity for meat, fish, and dairy in recent years, with an array of benefits for brands, packers, retailers, and consumers alike.
Korozo Group offers a comprehensive range of skin films under the KoroSkin brand that deliver highly efficient and effective packs for today’s global food industry – with proteins a particular speciality.
By effectively eliminating oxygen and gases from packs, VSP formats designed with KoroSkin achieve extended shelf-life performance and superb optical clarity.
Manufactured using in-house extrusion technology, KoroSkin films are engineered to offer excellent clarity and gloss, ensure enhanced tray sealing to minimise food loss, and offer the requisite barrier characteristics. A low gauge makes KoroSkin a more efficient option for vacuum packaging of proteins, with a material saving of up to 20% reducing transport and the associated CO2 emissions.
KoroSkin films are available in different constructions, each tailored to the specific demands of different products, from low profile, easy-to-vacuum products such as sliced meat, fish, and cheese to those specially designed for challenging vacuum packaging applications for large portions of fresh meat and fish, bone-in meats, and block cheese.
Alongside the emergence of VSP, MAP remains a major market for packaging of meats, fish, and dairy products. By replacing the air in packaging with a gas or gas mixture, chemical, microbial and biochemical reactions that cause food to spoil are slowed down. This makes MAP especially effective for fresh and perishable foods, such as proteins and dairy products.
To ensure the success of MAP applications, lidding films play an important role as they must ensure that the integrity of the pack is assured, from the moment the atmosphere is modified to the point of consumption. Korozo offers a number of lidding films to suit the application and designed for sealing to a number of tray types.
Lidding films like KoroTop are used extensively across the meat and dairy categories in MAP applications. These films are manufactured from polypropylene (PP) and have been engineered to seal to rigid PP trays. Customised film designs are available, depending on tray type and machine speed. High oxygen barrier performance extends product shelf life, with anti-fog and excellent optical properties delivering maximum on-shelf impact. A wide seal range and high seal performance minimises leaks and waste, with peeling from PP trays smooth and controlled.
Koro-Reclosable are multilayer coextruded lidding films that have been specifically designed for reclosable pack applications. They seal against APET, PP, PVC, and PE using a special adhesive layer designed into the film structure and which is used in place of mechanical closure systems.
For mono APET trays, KoroGpeel is a peelable and sealable option. Mono APET trays are growing in prominence as food manufacturers seek to replace trays formed from laminated materials and create packs manufactured from a single polymer and suited for post-consumer use recycling. Similarly, KoroRCY lidding films are made from a single polymer material ensuring they can be integrated into soft plastics collection and recycling systems. KoroRCY films are compatible with industry-standard packing lines.
Each of these skin and lidding films have been expertly created and crafted using Korozo’s 50-plus years of experience in developing flexibles and film solutions. For meat, fish, and dairy manufacturers, this provides peace of mind that the solution you choose is perfectly tailored to your application.