Avoid head in sand approach to packaging testing

Understanding how vapour permeability so dramatically effects the shelf-life extension, strength and printability of almost all packaging materials is hard. There are two approaches – the head in the sand approach or testing this critically important factor.

Versaperm's testing service is based around its new high-speed testing equipment which can often turn around results within 30min to 24h, instead of the weeks taken by conventional testing techniques. The company says vapour permeability testing has led to a four to eightfold shelf-life extension for some products.

Versaperm can test and measure vapour permeability not just for client’s material samples but also for their finished packaged products in tubs, bottles, films, sachets as well as virtually any type of package or material. Permeability can be measured not just for common water vapour problems but for oxygen, carbon dioxide, petrochemicals and all other non-proscribed gases.

It is important to be able to measure both material samples and finished products as manufacturing processes, such as thermoforming, can change a package’s permeability by several hundred percent.

Results are accurate in the parts per million or parts per billion ranges depending on the material and vapour.  Where desired Versaperm can also control environmental conditions such as temperature and pressure, even across diurnal and seasonal cycles. 

As well as its sample testing Versaperm develops and manufactures its own ranges of vapour testing equipment which are used by companies, universities, and national standards laboratories around the world.