What is EVOH?

Some products are not suitable for use with standard HDPE packaging because too strong a reaction can/will occur.
This may be because the product migrates or penetrates the packaging or because the product may evaporate, this may even alter your product. These things can then lead to a weakening of your packaging, which can be potentially dangerous.
For example, your labels may fall off your packaging and in some cases worse problems occur such as the packaging collapsing/imploding or blowing up.

Fortunately, there are several solutions for this.

In this article, we focus on the EVOH barrier, to explain a bit more about this.

EVOH stands for ethylene-vinylalchohol. EVOH has strong barrier properties against oxygen and other gases. Therefore, it is often used in the food industry to extend shelf life or as a carbon dioxide barrier.

EVOH is often used as a so-called ‘sandwich barrier’. It is suitable for the food and pharmaceutical industries. Because of its structure, among other things, you get optimal protection against oxidation, moisture and other aggressive forces exerted on the bottle from outside.

However, EVOH is not very resistant to water or water vapour, which is why EVOH is processed in multilayer films as a kind of ‘sandwich barrier, in which an EVOH layer is laminated onto one or more base layers. The combination of layers of PP and EVOH then forms a good water barrier.