Brazilian Meeting Attracts Large Audience

Published: July 01, 2003, By Walter Morgan

A communciation from the PLACE div. of TAPPI. Providing practical information to the converting and packaging industries.

The PLACE Division of TAPPI and CETEA, Centro De Tecnologia de Embalagens (Center for Packaging Technology), cosponsored the Third International TAPPI/CETEA Conference on Flexible Packaging on April 2–3, 2003. The meeting in the auditorium of the Brazilian Instituto de Tecnologia de Alimentos (Institute of Food Technology) in Campinas, Sao Paulo, Brazil attracted a large number of attendees from Brazil, Peru, Chile, Colombia, and the United States. The approximately 200 people in the audience comprised plant managers, production and process engineers, quality control engineers, maintenance personnel, and graduate students. The organizers of the event were Jose Torradas of DuPont Packaging and Leda Colto of CETEA.

Technical papers at the meeting numbered 18. They covered marketing trends for flexible packaging; barrier resins and technologies used in food packaging; adhesives, sealants, and primers; conversion technology to include coextrusion and lamination; and processing conditions. Presenters came from North American, European, and Brazilian companies.

Specific presentations at the meeting included "Nylon for Flexible Packaging" by Vagner de Castro of BASF Corp. and “Flexible Packaging Developments” by Rolf Thiele of Unipac. Pascal Dewael of Solvin SA talked on “PVDC—A Living Polymer,” and Alessandro Bernardi of Braskem talked on LHDPE—A New Alternative in Blown Film Coextrusion.” Another offering covering blown film was “Developments In Blown Film Profile Control” by Jorge Goldschmied of Gloucester Engineering.

In other areas, Michelle Stevens of Mocon Inc. gave a paper on “Testing Water Vapor Transmission.” Dilberto Carnir of ESI presented “Fundamentals of Electron Beam Curing.” Bruce Foster of MICA Corp. updated the technology in priming with his paper on “Recent Advances in Water-Borne Primers.” Rodrigo Lima of Ciba Corp. spoke on “Stabilization and Innovative Effects for Agriculture Plastics.”

The PLACE Division of TAPPI plans to cooperate with CETEA again to present the Fourth International TAPPI/CETEA Conference on Flexible Packaging in April 2005. Details will be available as soon as possible.