Grease-defiant, fluorochemical- free paper

free paper
PAPER is the favourite catcher of freshly-fried food because it absorbs grease ever so efficiently.Nobody wants to eat food that’s 30% cooking oil grease, but sometimes that’s what you get when you take away fast food like deep-fried hash browns in recycled paper carton cups that, whilst environmentally friendly, soaks up unwanted oil through the carton fibres down to your hands. Or, if you ordered instead from a multinational fast-food restaurant, chances are your hash browns’ paper cup is coated with fluorochemicals meant to keep the grease from getting into the paper fibre and away from your hands. Between the fluorochemical particles getting into the food,wouldn’t you rather get the grease?

Consumers don’t pay much attention to this, until of course new technology comes along to make them aware – especially in these health-conscious times – that there is a better product.As new fluorochemical-free, anti-grease paper has become available, consumers of greasy foods will from now on not be easy to please with old paper cups.
 
Acadia? EcoBarrier
Twin Rivers Paper Company, a leader in lightweight specialty packaging, label and publishing papers operating in Maine and New Brunswick in the United States, has recently expanded its portfolio with its own fluorochemical-free, oil- and grease-resistant paper meant to be used in food-service and quick-serve-restaurant (QSR) packaging.The latest paper packaging called Acadia? EcoBarrier offers the same functionality and performance benefits of their Acadia brand, but—just to emphasise this—with oil- and grease-resistance achieved without the use of fluorochemicals. Says Dave Deger, the company’s director of business development and marketing: “The QSR and food service industry are increasingly seeking fluorochemical-free alternatives for their packaging designs. Acadia EcoBarrier answers this need.”

Twin Rivers’ packaging papers are known, of course, for their excellent printability and convertibility, with high performance in secondary processes such as coating, waxing, foil and film laminating, and metallising. These alone make them a cut above the rest. Acadia, an uncoated machine-finished paper, available in a basis weight range of 15-75 lbs, and Bladepak C1S coated paper, available in a basis weight range of 35-73 lbs, are all FDA-compliant products meeting the requirements for direct food contact.

Coralpack for direct food wrapping
Faced with the on set of such environmental-cum-health concerns, the services of such companies as Ahlstrom Group Product & Technology Development began to offer their clients a grease-resistant paper free of this unintended impurity, thus designing a new generation of grease-resistant papers. The global high-performance fibre-based materials company had developed a PFOA-free version of its Ahlstrom Coralpack range, a flexible packaging paper for direct wrapping and packing of grease-containing food products such as biscuits, pastries, coffee beans, fast-food, pizzas, popcorn for micro wave, butter and margarine, as well as soup cubes. ‘PFOA-free paper’ means it does not contain perfluorooctanoic acid (below current detection limits of 20 ppb) and thus cannot release PFOA or any PFOA precursor.

Today, the entire Ahlstrom Coralpack paper range is available on request in a New Generation (NG) version, free of PFOA. The product’s paper range spans from 32 to 200 grams per square metre and offers high-performance paper characteristics such as printability, laminating, extrusion and crimping. Coralpack is manufactured at the Rottersac plant southwest of France. Whatever theirKids Running Shoes