How Automation is Enabling a New Era of Vacuum Metallizing

As the demands on converters and film producers become greater, machines must get smarter. That’s the simple truth at the heart of today’s packaging industry. Flexible packaging converters and film producers, for example, face increasing manufacturing complexity: new sustainable and more heat-sensitive substrates, tighter regulations, growing barrier performance requirements, and a shrinking pool of experienced operators. In this environment, machine and process automation is becoming increasingly necessary to manage that complexity while maintaining productivity, quality and profitability. Take vacuum metallizing for example, which has been an essential enabling technology for high-performance flexible packaging for decades. An extremely thin layer of aluminium is deposited onto a film such as PET, PP or increasingly PE-based substrates. That tiny amount of metal can dramatically improve the film's barrier – providing the necessary barrier protection against oxygen, moisture and light – without adding the weight and thickness associated with aluminium foil.

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