Classifications

• • B—PERFORMING OPERATIONS; TRANSPORTING
  • B65—CONVEYING; PACKING; STORING; HANDLING THIN OR FILAMENTARY MATERIAL
  • B65D—CONTAINERS FOR STORAGE OR TRANSPORT OF ARTICLES OR MATERIALS, e.g. BAGS, BARRELS, BOTTLES, BOXES, CANS, CARTONS, CRATES, DRUMS, JARS, TANKS, HOPPERS, FORWARDING CONTAINERS; ACCESSORIES, CLOSURES, OR FITTINGS THEREFOR; PACKAGING ELEMENTS; PACKAGES
  • B65D63/00—Flexible elongated elements, e.g. straps, for bundling or supporting articles
  • B65D63/10—Non-metallic straps, tapes, or bands; Filamentary elements, e.g. strings, threads or wires; Joints between ends thereof
  • B65D63/1009—Adhesive tapes
• • B—PERFORMING OPERATIONS; TRANSPORTING
  • B65—CONVEYING; PACKING; STORING; HANDLING THIN OR FILAMENTARY MATERIAL
  • B65D—CONTAINERS FOR STORAGE OR TRANSPORT OF ARTICLES OR MATERIALS, e.g. BAGS, BARRELS, BOTTLES, BOXES, CANS, CARTONS, CRATES, DRUMS, JARS, TANKS, HOPPERS, FORWARDING CONTAINERS; ACCESSORIES, CLOSURES, OR FITTINGS THEREFOR; PACKAGING ELEMENTS; PACKAGES
  • B65D71/00—Bundles of articles held together by packaging elements for convenience of storage or transport, e.g. portable segregating carrier for plural receptacles such as beer cans or pop bottles; Bales of material
  • B65D71/0085—Packaging elements adhered to the articles, e.g. a carton sheet

Definitions

• the invention relates to a label to be applied onto a container, said label comprises a polymeric substrate at one side printed and at the other side to be applied onto the container, coated with an adhesive.
• the invention further relates to a tape to be used to assemble two or more containers and to an assembly of two or more containers joined by an envelope.
• the invention also relates to a method for producing such an adhesive tape or label.
• containers such as bottles, cans and other vessels, in particular filled with a liquid, preferably a beverage, had been marketed as a pack of several containers, for example a pack of six cans, bundled by means of a foil of a reinforced polymer.
• a drawback of such a pack was that as soon as one of the cans is removed from the pack, the connection between the cans was lost and the remaining pack only consists of five separate cans in an envelope, whereby the cans can freely move with respect to each other, so that the envelope has lost its function.
• This system in which a label has been used removed from a backing material causes a hugh amount of waste especially the backing material for which usually paper has been used coated with silicon.
• wraparound labels having no pressure sensitive adhesive coating which labels are suppl ied as printed reels, and applied with special machines, where the individual label is cut away from the reel , and appl ied onto the container or where the machine itself has previously applied a wax-like material (hot-melt) on the entire area of contact with the item to be labelled, or, more recently, on longitudinal or transversal strips.
• a drawback of these wraparound labels is that the hot- melt coating has to be applied with machines, although inherently fast (30,000 - 40,000 bottles/minute on standard 1.5 litre soft drink PET bottles) , using a hot-melt coating station.
• This station causes significant safety and contamination problems, because the heated unit poses significant hazards for machine operators and maintenance personnel and the possibility of leakages and sprays of the melted waxy material contained in the applicator unit poses contamination problems unacceptable for modern food industry standards.
• pre-cut self- adhesive labels are supplied as pressure sensitive adhesive facestock material, generally printed on the outside, and laminated to a silicone-coated release liner or "backing" material (usually paper).
• Such labels are pre-cut in their final shape, and they are removed from the release liner and applied onto the surface of the items to be labelled.
• a drawback of these labels is that the material is a thick laminate and the release material is discarded after application. This gives a waste of material, and causes recyclability/recoverability problems. That system is intrinsically slow and is reasonably suited for medicine droppers, small bottles, or small-size items.
• a label according to the invention comprises a polymeric substrate at one side printed and at the other side to be applied on the container, coated with an adhesive, characterized in that the adhesive is a pressure sensitive adhesive which label is to be obtained from a roll.
• the adhesive is a pressure sensitive adhesive which label is to be obtained from a roll.
• a tape has been developed to be used to assemble two or more containers, which tape is printed and provided with an adhesive in the same way as discussed above in connection with the label .
• the label material is a plastic film such as polyethylene, polypropylene or polyethylene terephthalate that has been surface printed or reverse printed, then coated with a pressure sensitive coating, applied by conventional methods such as hot-melt coating, solvent coating, or aqueous emulsion coating. This coating can be applied with full coverage of the label surface or only in selected areas (patterned coating).
• the adhesive formulation can be a "permanent” one, to be used on bottles or items where the label cannot be removed, due to safety or security reasons (medicine, etc.). Otherwise, the formulation can be "removable”, to be used on bottles or items where the label must be easily removed, for recycle/recovery purposes.
• the printed/coated adhesive material is wound on itself without the need of a release layer.
• the outside of the plastic material has peculiar characteristics that renders unwinding very easy without possibility of removal of the adhesive layer from the surface it was applied upon. Because of this characteristic the material can also be used as a tape to assemble containers such as bottles according to the invention which self-adhesive tape is provided around a part of the circumference and over a part of the height of each container forming part of the assembly. Such an unprinted adhesive tape can be provided over the labels of the containers in such a manner that the label remains clearly legible. It also is possible that the tape is printed and can be used as a label.
• the assembly consists of three or more bottles filled with a beverage, in particular a soft drink, which bottles are made of polyethylene terephthalate.
• Figure 1 shows an assembly according to the invention, in which three bottles are joined in the form of a triangle
• Figure 2 shows a comparable assembly, in which the three bottles are placed in side-by-side relationship, however.
• Figures 1 and 2 show the bottles indicated by numerals 1-3 joined into an assembly by means of adhesive tape 4.
• a handle 5 is incorporated in said adhesive tape, which handle 5 is made of a material different from that of tape 4.
• handle 5 is made of a material which functions as a substrate for the adhesive tape.
• the labels on the bottles may remain visible in at least two manners, by making the adhesive tape transparent or by printing the adhesive tape in such a manner that the printed tape coincides with the text present on the labels of the bottles. In that case the text on the adhesive tape must to that end be adapted to the text and the illustration of the labels of the bottles or containers and be provided round the containers with precision.
• the material of the adhesive tape that is the substrate and the adhesive, must be adapted to the material of which the bottles or containers are made.
• the adhesive tape must be self-adhesive, which means that when one bottle is removed from the assembly, the adhesive tape can be readily opened by means of a strip provided thereon without damaging the labels on the bottles, the bottle to be used can be removed from the assembly, after which the adhesive tape can be provided around the remaining bottles again.
• the assembly shown in the drawing is limited to three bottles, it will be apparent that such an assembly may also consist of two, four or more bottles.
• the method for producing the adhesive tape according to the invention is characterized in that said substrate is in the form of a film and that said adhesive is applied thereto by means of a smooth roller, which rotates in the same direction as the direction of movement of the film, that the adhesive is applied by having said roller rotate in a vessel filled with an aqueous emulsion of adhesive, that excess adhesive is removed, so that a layer of adhesive having a thickness of 15-50 g/m 2 remains after drying, with the solid matter content of said layer being 30-70 % by weight.
• the amount of adhesive is 20-40 g/m 2 . If a print is provided on the adhesive tape, the substrate is first provided with said print, after which said layer of adhesive is applied to said print, so that the text or the illustration is screened by the substrate on the outside.
• Example 1 In order to produce a printed adhesive tape a 40 ⁇ m thick tensilized film of bi-oriented polypropylene was provided with a print by means of a flexography press, using a polyamide-based ink. Said ink is commercially available from Sun Chemical under the designation PM 214. An adhesive was applied to the printed side of said printed film by means of a roll coater. Said roll coater rotated through a bath filled with an adhesive consisting of an aqueous dispersion of modified acryl polymer, which is commercially available from Rohm & Haas under the designation PS 6120.
• the adhesive was applied to the film by having the roll coater rotate in the vessel, with the film being moved over the roll coater in the same direction as the direction of rotation of said roll coater.
• the excess amount of adhesive was removed from the film by means of a Mayer bar, resulting in an amount of 15 g/m 2 of adhesive on the film after drying.
• the adhesive tape thus obtained was cut to a width of 10 cm and affixed to PET bottles provided with polyethylene labels, which were provided with a print on the outside.
• the adhesive tape could be affixed to said labels in a self-adhesive manner and be removed therefrom, which operation could be carried out repeatedly without the label on the bottle being damaged.
• an adhesive tape was produced in a conventional manner by means of a 40 ⁇ m thick PVC film, whereby a conventional natural rubber adhesive in a solvent was applied. Said adhesive tape was also cut to a width of 10 cm and affixed to the PET bottles as described above.
• Example 2 The method according to example 1 was repeated, whereby the same substrate was used, which substrate was in this case printed with an acryl polymer-based aqueous dispersion of an ink composition marketed by Sun Chemical under the designation Idromono.
• Said adhesive was applied to the film in an amount of 18 g/m 2 .
• This adhesive tape was used to form an assembly consisting of three bottles as shown in Figure 2.
• the bottles, which were made of PET, were provided with paper labels affixed to the bottles by means of a conventional adhesive.
• the adhesive tape mentioned in Example 1 was used.
• a 500-cc glass jar for medicinal products was traditionally labelled with a conventional adhesive facestock material having the following structure: - white HDPE outside printed 50 ⁇ m + 80 g/m 2 Kraft paper (silicone coated) release liner.
• the 500-cc jar was labelled on a wraparound machine using an adhesive material being a solvent-based 15 g/m 2 permanent adhesive.
• the substrate was a 60 ⁇ m white pigmented bi-oriented polypropylene film gravure-printed on the outside and coated with the adhesive on the inside.
• the printed surface was overlacquered with a 2 g/m 2 transparent varnish, to guarantee an easy unwinding of the adhesive coated roll.
• the length and width of the label were equivalent to those of example 3a, with no overlapping of the label sides.
• the labelling system 3a for comparison, was intrinsically slow, never exceeding 100 bottles/minute and more than 50 % of the weight of the adhesive facestock laminate was discarded.
• the release 1 iner was a sil icone-coated paper, impossible to recycle with conventional systems causing scrap paper/board. Jammings of the labelling machine were frequent, due to the high tack of the adhesive formulation and the large size of the label. Machine downtime was significant and this forced to slow down the labelling operation to 60 bottles/minute.
• the labelling process 3b according to the invention was practically free from jamming. No scraps of the labelling material were produced, and the wraparound machine operated at speeds consistently in excess of 10,000 bottles/hour.
• This material was a 35 ⁇ m transparent bi-oriented polypropylene film, reverse printed by rotogravure and coated with a patterned coating of removable acrylic-based aqueous emulsion adhesive (15 g/m 2 on the coated areas),
• the coating pattern was a transversal stripe, perpendicular to the web direction of motion, 1 cm wide, in register with the cut position of the label.
• half of this adhesive area glued on the bottle, and half on it glued on itself after overlapping of the two label sides, leaving the bottle free to expand as in the previous reference example.
• the labels were pre-cut in the conventional way and the labelling machine placed them in a circumferential recessed area on the side of the container.
• the size of the label was 400 mm x 150 mm.
• the same 5 litre HDPE container was labelled on a labelling machine (produced by Gandini S.p.A. of Italy, owner of the trademark Twin Pack) with an adhesive material being a hot-melt pressure sensitive adhesive.
• the substrate of the label was a 50 ⁇ m white pig ented bi-oriented polypropylene film gravure-printed on the outside surface, coated on the inside surface with 20 g/m 2 hot-melt pressure sensitive adhesive.
• the outside of the adhesive material was overlacquered with a proper release coating in order to guarantee the correct and even unwinding of the reel-fed adhesive label.
• the label was cut and applied by the labelling machine on the same recessed area of the container.

Landscapes

• Engineering & Computer Science (AREA)
• Mechanical Engineering (AREA)
• Adhesive Tapes (AREA)
• Labeling Devices (AREA)
• Package Frames And Binding Bands (AREA)
• Adhesives Or Adhesive Processes (AREA)
• Details Of Rigid Or Semi-Rigid Containers (AREA)

Priority Applications (4)

Applications Claiming Priority (2)

Publications (1)

Family

ID=19763394

Family Applications (1)

Country Status (6)

Cited By (6)

Families Citing this family (3)

Citations (11)

• 1996
  • 1996-08-21 NL NL1003841A patent/NL1003841C2/nl not_active IP Right Cessation
• 1997
  • 1997-08-19 DE DE69704665T patent/DE69704665T2/de not_active Expired - Lifetime
  • 1997-08-19 AT AT97936877T patent/ATE200769T1/de not_active IP Right Cessation
  • 1997-08-19 EP EP97936877A patent/EP0928273B1/de not_active Expired - Lifetime
  • 1997-08-19 WO PCT/NL1997/000470 patent/WO1998007635A1/en active IP Right Grant
  • 1997-08-19 AU AU39536/97A patent/AU3953697A/en not_active Abandoned

Patent Citations (11)

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