Case study 1

A supplier of polypropylene tubes required new CAD drawings of the tube, new mould manufacture and production of new tubes. This was outsourced to our contacts in the moulding industry and co-ordinated by FaraPack Polymers Ltd in order to obtain a competitive quote for the customer.

Case study 2

A leading car part supplier needed accurate (to 1%) analysis of the constituents of a polymer based liquid. FaraPack Polymers liaised with our chromatography expert, who proposed GPC to split the fluid into its constituents, and then the running of various standards to assess composition. GC was then used for constituents unsuitable for GPC analysis. The results were then reported to the customer.

Case study 3

A company specialising in nanotechnology wished to characterise beads encapsulated in a Polystyrene/Polyvinylpyrrolidone shell. Beads were made up by FaraPack Polymers according to a recipe given by the company. These were then encapsulated in the Polystyrene/Polyvinylpyrrolidone shell. Characterisation of the beads before and after encapsulation was carried out using Scanning Electron Microscopy, Raman microscopy and particle sizing. Finally, FaraPack Polymers designed a method of functionalising the shells to allow for specific binding.

Case study 4

A producer of medical devices approached FaraPack Polymers in order to carry out an analysis on the failure of a part, comprising two different polymeric materials. It was proposed that this occurred due to plasticiser migration from one part to the other.

FaraPack Polymers identified THF as a suitable solvent, and also found a successful extraction process. GC analysis was then performed on the THF extracted material in order to access if plasticiser was found in the unplastisised sections. Further work was suggested and undertaken by FaraPack to confirm these results, by testing the unplastisised sections for a specific, commercially available plastisier suggested by the manufacturer to be present in the polymer. The results showed that the plasticiser had migrated to the failed part and therefore could have contributed to the failure.

Case study 5: Track and Trace Project

FaraPack Polymers was originally set up with the help of the Faraday Packaging Partnership, and the two companies continue to work closely together, enabling FaraPack to have access to the wealth of experience held by the Faraday Packaging Partnership.

An ongoing project between the Polymer IRC and the Faraday Packaging Partnership, which FaraPack Polymers are involved heavily with, is the Track and Trace project.

This project aims to develop a generic profiling 'clock' based on thin film, printable technologies, at the item or carton level, which will profile a range of properties indicative of shelf-life, stability and safety of a food product throughout the supply chain. The tag will provide information on the history of the product, for example, storage temperature, emission of volatile gases, pressure (internal to the packaging), humidity, pH, incident light etc, over a given time period. The tag will enable track and trace visibility in the food chain to monitor spoilage, reduce wastage, improve recall efficiency, identify and resolve weak points in the supply chain and inform retail storage conditions. The project is led by a collaboration of packaging and food companies representing the supply chain with scientific and regulatory input from leading UK research centres, including FaraPack Polymers.

The project objective is to develop cheap, printable time sensitive device, using responsive smart thin film coatings to give a time history recording of the quality of the food product. In order to be of use to the food and beverage packaging industry such technology would need a cost-effective, integratable deposition process such as inkjet printing at the item level, and be compatible with the materials and packaging methods currently in use.