Cold-seal packaging is a complex package. It often involves two films, one reverse-printed with the brand owner’s graphics and a second that provides the barrier to protect the product inside.

These two films are then laminated together to produce a single inseparable web. From there, the cold seal is applied on the inside surface of the web in a pattern registered/aligned with the graphics on the outside of the web.

Easy enough, but selecting the right two films from the beginning is highly important. Both the film and the cold seal must be compatible. Otherwise, you run the risk of not being able to unwind finished rolls at the time of packaging. This is known as blocking. Another risk due to incompatibility between cold seal and film is poor package seals — or even no seals.

About cold-seal adhesive

Cold-seal itself is an adhesive that is applied in a pattern on the backside of the packaging material. It is designed to adhere to itself with relatively low pressure alone.

Cold-seal is a natural based product, so it’s fundamentally inconsistent, and can be unstable if handled improperly. It requires highly specialized knowledge when applying to packaging materials.

If it isn’t handled properly packaging producers can be faced with tremendous waste, resulting in very high costs. Worse, poorly produced cold-seal packaging can make it to the end user/brand owner. The end user may experience blocked rolls, poor seals, no seals, and/or unpleasant odor.

For this reason, leading packaging producers who are capable of producing cold-seal packaging focus only on long runs. They consider the risk and liability to be too high and therefore decide not to commit their full resources to short-production runs.

The limitations of heat seal

The alternative packaging technology for bar wrap is heat-seal packaging. Heat seal is also an adhesive, but heat-seal adhesives require heat, pressure, and dwell time. When sealing a heat-seal adhesive, those three parameters (heat, pressure, and dwell) can vary significantly depending on the heat-seal adhesive, the packaging material, and the packaging line speed.

The sealing process is often the limiting factor on many packaging lines. The process must be a precise balance between temperature, pressure, and dwell in order to achieve secure package seals. When heat sealing, the heat needs to travel through all the layers of the packaging material to reach and activate the heat-seal adhesive. This often limits the capacity of the packaging line due to less than optimal packaging line speeds.

The advantage of cold seal

The principal benefit of cold-seal packaging is the increase in packaging speed over heat-seal packaging. The packaging speed of cold-seal packaging can be as much as 10x faster than that of heat-seal packaging. For any brand owner, the ability to increase packaging speed could mean prolonging the decision of purchasing another packaging line.

We can help with your cold-seal packaging needs.

From short productions runs to large production runs, we can produce your cold-seal packaging. If you are ready to get your chocolate bars, granola bars, cereal bars, or protein bars into the marketplace, let us help you design your bar packaging.

Our team can help with proper sizing, material selection, and management of your art and graphics. We can produce your cold-seal packaging at quantities that fit your needs at an economical price. Reach out to us.