Ahlstrom Launches PFOA-Free Flexible Packaging Paper for Greasy Foods

Ahlstrom, Finland, has developed a PFOA-free (contains no Perfluorooctanoic acid) version of its Ahlstrom Coralpack range, a flexible packaging paper for direct wrapping and packing of numerous grease-containing food products, such as biscuits, pastries, coffee beans, fast food, take-away food, pizzas, popcorn for micro wave, butter and margarine, soup cubes, and others.

To produce grease resistant packaging papers, fluorochemicals are added in the paper production process. However, as Ahlstrom explains, deriving from the production process of these fluorochemicals, trace amounts of PFOA can be found as an unintended impurity. In January 2006, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) invited manufacturers of fluorochemicals to commit to reduce by 95% PFOA from their emissions and products content not later than by 2010 and to eliminate it totally by 2015.

To offer its customers a grease resistant paper free of this unintended impurity, Ahlstrom Group Product & Technology Development services designed the new generation of grease resistant papers. Now, the entire Ahlstrom Coralpack paper range is available on request in a New Generation (NG) version, free of PFOA.

The new product's paper range spans from 32 to 200 gsm and provides high performance paper characteristics such as printability, laminating, extrusion, and crimping. Coralpack is produced at Ahlstrom's Rottersac plant in southwestern France.

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