Latest News and Updates from Sunkey Packaging

Baby food is among the most regulated food categories globally — and for good reason. The consumers are infants whose immune systems are still developing, whose gut flora is immature, and who cannot communicate distress or illness the way adults can. A packaging failure that causes contamination or premature spoilage carries consequences far more severe than in adult food categories. Read More

Choosing the wrong retort pouch size is among the most common — and most costly — mistakes in flexible packaging development. An undersized pouch fails fill weight targets or ruptures during retort due to over-pressurization. An oversized pouch creates excessive headspace, increasing oxygen load on the barrier layer and reducing shelf life. Read More

Seafood is among the most demanding product categories for retort packaging — combining high water activity, volatile aroma compounds, naturally occurring enzymes, and FDA-regulated pH thresholds that determine which sterilization protocol applies. Getting the material structure, F₀ target, and sealing parameters wrong does not just mean a shorter shelf life: it means a potential food safety recall. Read More

The retort pouch was not born in a supermarket — it was engineered for war. Today, the same technology that feeds soldiers in combat zones underpins a global flexible packaging industry valued at USD 5.55 billion in 2024 and growing at 7.0% annually. Understanding military-grade MRE pouch specifications gives food manufacturers a benchmark for the highest level of retort packaging performance commercially available. Read More

In October 2020, Amcor and Nestlé announced what they described as the world's first recyclable flexible retort pouch. The product — an all-polypropylene structure using Amcor's AmLite HeatFlex technology — was certified recyclable in Germany, Austria, Italy, Norway, and the Netherlands. Read More

For the past decade, the packaging industry has been told that chemical recycling will solve the problem that mechanical recycling cannot: the end-of-life challenge of multilayer flexible packaging. Aluminum foil retort pouches, multilayer snack bags, lidding films — the complex, mixed-material structures that preserve food — cannot be processed in mechanical recycling streams. Chemical recycling, the argument goes, can handle these materials and close the loop. Read More

Open any wet pet food pouch with a clear window, any transparent ready-to-eat meal, or any microwaveable retort pouch, and you are almost certainly holding a product whose shelf life depends on a thin layer of EVOH — ethylene vinyl alcohol copolymer. The layer is typically 5–15 micrometers thick, invisible to the eye, sandwiched between layers of polyethylene or polypropylene. Without it, oxygen would permeate the package and spoil the contents within days. Read More

It is the early 1950s. The US Army's Quartermaster Food and Container Institute in Natick, Massachusetts — the division responsible for feeding soldiers in the field — faces a persistent logistical problem. Metal cans work, but they are heavy, bulky, and slow to heat. A 24-can case of C-rations weighs over 20 kg. Every kilogram of packaging is a kilogram a soldier must carry. Read More

Artwork rejection is the single most common cause of production delays in retort pouch manufacturing — a rejected file adds 2 to 4 weeks to your timeline before a single pouch is produced. Unlike standard flexible packaging, retort pouches undergo 121°C or 135°C sterilization cycles that impose strict constraints on ink chemistry, laminate structure, and color registration that most general packaging design guidelines do not cover. Read More

A structured procurement guide for supply chain and quality teams — covering the six evaluation dimensions, mandatory certifications, on-site audit checklist, compliance documentation requirements, and the eight red flags that should halt any qualification process. Read More

The definitive specification guide for RTE food manufacturers — mapping product density, retort temperature, and format requirements to laminate structures, seal parameters, and compliance documentation. Read More

Baby food is the highest-scrutiny category in food packaging. Stricter migration limits, BPA bans, zero-tolerance aromatic amine requirements, and mandatory Process Authority validation apply before any retort-packaged infant product reaches the shelf. Read More

The definitive guide for pet food manufacturers — covering laminate structures, F₀ targets, seal requirements, and material selection for 121°C and 135°C retort processing. Read More

EU packaging regulations have come and gone before. But the Packaging and Packaging Waste Regulation (EU) 2025/40 — commonly called PPWR — is structurally different from its predecessor Directive 94/62/EC, and that difference matters enormously for retort pouch manufacturers selling into the European market. Read More

In a retort pouch laminate, the layers most people focus on are the barrier (EVOH, aluminum foil), the seal (CPP, RCPP), and the structural outer layer (PET). The adhesive bonds holding these layers together receives far less attention — even though it sits directly adjacent to the food-contact inner layer and can, under the wrong conditions, introduce carcinogenic contaminants into the food. Read More

Ethylene vinyl alcohol copolymer (EVOH) is the workhorse of flexible packaging barrier films. Walk into any supermarket and pick up a retort pouch, a squeezable ketchup bottle, or a vacuum-packed cheese — there is a high probability you are holding EVOH. It appears in the barrier layer of millions of packages produced every day because it delivers oxygen transmission rates (OTR) that no cost-competitive alternative polymer can match under ideal conditions. Read More