Blister packs are made to hang on a holder in the retail store. They often consist of a paperboard backing plus a moulded transparent plastic front section to display the product to the consumer. Bliste packs are one of the World’s most widely used forms of packaging and they can now be made totally in paperboard.
“Our development work had two starting points - environmental impact and ease of opening,” explains Eirik Faukland, the packaging veteran in charge of R&D at Moltzau. “To get around the well-known problem of the extreme difficulty of opening plastic blister packs, the basic concept was to replace the plastic with paperboard. What’s unique with the Cefapac solution is that we chose to replace all the traditional creases with perforations, which gives the desired openability.”
However, when perforations replace creases, the risk is that they cannot protect the pack’s contents well enough. The choice of which paperboard to use is therefore crucial. The Norwegian firm then turned to Iggesund’s paperboard offer. “Invercote’s superior tear strength is a prerequisite for a good-quality pack,” Faukland says. “Both the strength and how it performs in the various stages of converting and filling are crucial.”
Several packaged goods already use the solution
The world-leading manufacturer of ski wax, Swix, is currently packing some of its waxes in Cefapac packs and plans to expand the trial. Other products in Cefapacs already on the market are dressings for wounds and some non-prescription medicines. Cefapac is suitable for many categories of products distributed in blisters, including cosmetics.
Beyond the environmental benefits and the increased ease of use by consumers, Moltzau also claims that Cefapac’s perforations have allowed the company’s customers to increase the speed of their filling lines compared with those using creased packaging blanks.
Several awards
In the autumn of 2015 Cefapac was honoured with a Scandinavian packaging award, Scanstar, and in 2017 Cefapac will receive the WorldStar award from the World Packaging Organisation.
As the pack’s designer, Eirik Faukland has also been warmly praised by representatives of the Swedish and Norwegian Rheumatism Associations, which represent rheumatism sufferers. The associations actively encourage the packaging industry to develop more easily opened forms of packaging.
