UFlex debuts new range of products, breaks ground in Nigeria

INDIA – UFlex, India’s largest multinational and global leader in polymer sciences, has added a fleet of new value-added and solutions products to its portfolio that not just help its customers’ products stand out on the retail shelves but also help brands extend an overall elevated packaging and consumption experience.

To arrest the challenges of counterfeiting amongst brands in various sectors, the engineering business of UFlex has developed a new series of pouch-making machines that integrate holographic strips within the pre-printed film with 100% ‘i mark to i mark’ registration accuracy.

Besides addressing the challenge of counterfeiting via i-mark registration, the machine’s D-motion sealing technology enhances dwell time for sealing, thus improving aesthetics and seal integrity, allowing repeat use.

As such, the machine renders double-fold benefits to brand owners – of counterfeiting and enjoying the holographic attributes that enhance the overall look and feel of the product to make their product stand out on retail shelves.

Customizing the brand Milky Mist requirement, UFlex has also developed a three-side sealed pouch packaging structure to pack Asal Coin Parota through a special high barrier PET film that increases the barrier properties by 50% under ambient conditions and allows the parota to stay fresh for a longer duration.

In addition, Flex Films USA launched its patented BOPET high barrier film F-UHB-M, designed to replace aluminum foil in flexible packaging applications. With its new specially formulated BOPET structure, F-UHB-M comes with superior gas and water barrier while achieving one of the lowest oxygen and moisture barrier values and industry-leading metal adhesion of 1200 gm/25mm that aids improvement and extension of product shelf-life.

Moreover, UFlex has created a heavy-duty mono-material bag for Danish brand KIMS for its snacks packaging segment for the European market.

To make the brands stay relevant and sustainable in the snacks segment, the flexible packaging business of the high-barrier packaging is made of mono-material under polypropylene extreme and bears recyclable ‘logo 5’ mark enabling easy recycling in the existing polypropylene recycling streams while ensuring that the snack packed remains fresh as ever. KIMS is using these snack packs to pack food products such as chips and wafers.

UFlex expands to Nigeria

Further, the company has commissioned its BOPET film manufacturing plant in the Ogun State of Nigeria with a production capacity of 45,000 TPA.

Biaxially-oriented polyethylene terephthalate(BOPET) is a polyester film made from stretched polyethylene terephthalate (PET) and is used for its high tensile strength, chemical and dimensional stability, transparency, reflectivity, gas and aroma barrier properties, and electrical insulation.

Spread over 37 acres, the plant houses a first-of-its-kind 10.6-meter-wide BOPET film line in Africa and also has two metallizers with a total production of 15000 TPA. The plant that created over 200 direct jobs is set to cater to the packaging film demand coming from the fast-growing economy of Nigeria’s Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) and USA.