Glossary

The filling of containers with low-viscosity liquid product by drawing a vacuum on the sealed container. Vacuum filling requires the ability to form a good seal across the container finish and a container with sufficient rigidity that it will not collapse or distort under vacuum.

A method of packaging where the air is withdrawn from the primary pack. The usual objective of vacuum packaging is to remove atmospheric oxygen, which is implicated in most product degradation. Vacuum packaging when using flexible packaging materials also reduces volume to save transportation cost.

A form-fill-seal machine in which the roll-fed flexible packaging material is unwound and shaped while travelling vertically up and down through the machine's operating stations. A VFFS machine occupies less floor space than a horizontal form-fill-seal machine, but it has the disadvantage of having a single point through which filling or other open-package functions can be performed.

A method of moving product through a filling or transport system by inducing a vibration in a sloped tray at about the resonance frequency of the product. In effect, the product periodically becomes momentarily weightless, and in this state will descend the feed tray slope for a short distance.

It has all the good properties of PET film, plus much improved oxygen and water vapour barrier properties.