GFTC gets new equipment for permeation testing
By Canadian Packaging Staff
General Food and Rural Affairs GFTC lifecycle MOCON Inc. Ontario Ministry of Agriculture packagingAs a newly MOCON certified lab, the GFTC can further help packaging or shelf life concerns.
On June 28, 2011, the Guelph Food Technology Centre (GFTC) officially opened its MOCON-certified laboratory at its headquarters in Guelph, Ont., 40 minutes west of Toronto.
MOCON is a Minneapolis, MN-based manufacturer of precise analytical instrumentation that has established a reputation as a global leader for package testing equipment.
At a ribbon cutting ceremony featuring assistant deputy minister Bonnie Winchester of the Ontario Ministry of Agriculture, Food and Rural Affairs, and MOCON’s product manager Alan Shema and Doug Lindemann, its vice-president and general manager, the GFTC offered a glimpse of the new equipment it will utilize to help assist customer requests in maintaining product quality while maximizing product shelf life.
GFTC's Packaging Laboratory Technologist Chris Chop uses easy-to-use MOCON software to program the MOCON OX-TRAN 2/21 oxygen permealbility equipment (left).
The new equipment includes: two MOCON OX-TRAN 2/21 machines that analyze oxygen permeability of films, and; two PERMATRAN-W 3/33 models that test water vapor permeability in film. The lab owns a previously-purchased OX-TRAN 2/60 that examines oxygen permeability of plastic bottles and other containers.
Winchester says, “The GFTC is a pretty important organization for us. This new partnership between MOCON and the GFTC will give packaging manufacturers and vendors a better method of accurately testing their packaging, and allow them to expand their knowledge.”
Adds GFTC’s president and chief technical officer Frank Schreurs: “We are pleased to be in this partnership with MOCON. We’ve done utilizing permeation equipment before, but it was getting antiquated, so we approached MOCON who along with providing us excellent equipment, educated us into becoming a certified MOCON facility.”
Oxygen and moisture vapor packaging transmission rates are very important attributes for product packaging to maintain product shelf life. The new MOCON equipment enables GFTC to obtain accurate and lower level readings due to the instrument sensitivity.
Sums up MOCON’s Lindemann: “The addition of the state-of-the-art MOCON barrier protection test equipment, alongside GFTC’s food industry expertise, will allow it to better serve its Canadian and global customer base. Being able to outsource testing of materials to the GFTC is a benefit to a company because the GFTC is a global leader in food safety, quality management and more, and with our equipment it will continue to lead well into the future.”
About MOCON
Headquartered in Minneapolis, the company is a global leader for high-quality permeation systems, leak detectors and headspace analyzers for food, pharmaceutical and other industries. Its instrumentation and testing services are used by leading brand owners internationally to help insure products reach consumers with the desired package performance and shelf- life attributes.
For more information, visit www.mocon.com.
About Guelph Food Technology Centre
Known as the GFTC, it is a world leader in food industry solutions. Its packaging services are known for package integrity testing, closure testing, barrier testing, oxygen indicator technology, shelf-life testing and improvement, and consulting on sustainable food packaging. The GFTC works with companies along the entire food chain assisting more than 1,500 companies and training more than 3,500 people.
For more information, visit www.gftc.ca.
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