Quality Made Us Global

Plastic Injection Molding for Consumer Food and Beverage Packaging

spout caps with tips
Cap Cell 2

Consumer food and beverage manufacturing companies are always on the lookout for a cost-effective contractor solution to meet their plastic packaging needs. Global Plastics has the molding solution to meet those needs. Our strategy in every client project we take on is straightforward: To ensure the packaging components meet design specifications and high quality standards while at the same time calculating how to most efficiently and cost-effectively produce the molded components needed.

Plastic Product Packaging Design and Development for Injection Molding

A product that falls in the consumer food and beverage market category requires special attention regarding its packaging design. After all, the food and beverage industry is heavily regulated in order to ensure all related components comply with safety standards. Those standards include the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and Hazardous Analysis Critical Control Point (HACCP), among others. When you work with Global Plastics to produce food-grade plastic packaging through the injection molding manufacturing process, you never have to worry about safety regulation compliance because it’s embedded throughout our design and production process.
Criteria for Choosing Consumer Food and Beverage Plastics

The choice of materials used for consumer food and beverage product packaging, whether plastic bottles, other containers, or plastic overcaps for containers (whether dry goods such as ground coffee or liquid products) is critical. Because they come into contact with food and/or people, food-grade materials are those that are durable and work well in light of the following criteria:

  • Stability: The plastic products must remain both inert and nonreactive throughout their entire life cycle.
  • Chemical Resistance: Must withstand exposure to both the food or beverage product itself along with a range of environmental factors and cleaning chemicals.
  • Non-Contamination: If the plastic used includes color additives, those must not contaminate or degrade the food or beverage product in any way.
  • Temperature Tolerance: The plastic materials must be able to withstand specific temperature ranges from extremely low to quite high depending on the intended application.
  • UV Radiation Protection: Whether from indoor or outdoor exposure, the plastic will need to withstand UV radiation and protect the food or beverage product from it as well.
Common Plastic Resins for Food-Grade Applications

There are thousands of different plastic resins available today covering a wide range of formulations to meet any specific needs and requirements you can imagine. Among the most common food-grade plastic resins used in consumer food and beverage injection molding manufacturing processes are the following:

  • PET plastic: Polyethylene terephthalate is in the polyester family and is one of the most common choices for making plastic bottles that are semi-rigid and retain their shape under moderate pressure.
  • PP plastic: Polypropylene is non-toxic and offers good tolerance of both low and high temperatures. It can be used to make boxes and bags and is often relied on for snap fit closures that will be used repeatedly over time (such as the caps on condiment squeeze bottles).
  • PS plastic: Polystyrene is a light, stiff, hard, brittle, waterproof plastic with excellent low-temperature tolerance. It is often used for processed food boxes as well as snack boxes.
  • PC plastic: Polycarbonate is very strong and offers excellent temperature resistance, making it a solid choice for bottles that will contain fluid products.
  • HDPE plastic: High-density polyethylene is durable because of its stiffness and hardness and has good chemical resistance. Rigid plastic containers often rely on this type of plastic.
  • LDPE plastic: Low-density polyethylene is both non-toxic and odorless. It is typically used for more flexible packaging, as well as films and wraps.
Plastic Injection Molding Project Management at Global Plastics

Global Plastics is a full-service injection molding service provider, including both standard & high speed injection molding and blow molding. Project management practices include a highly collaborative approach from start to finish, keeping each customer client in the loop with frequent communication every step of the way. Our professional product engineers and designers have deep expertise in meeting a wide range of customer client product needs, including prototyping and testing.

When it’s time to tool a production mold, our in-house, full-service tooling department is ready to machine the mold out of the right type of metal to withstand high-volume production runs or source an overseas or specialty mold from our proven and reliable supply chain. Tool asset management practices are in place to ensure the longest life-cycle possible for each mold by carefully tracking, monitoring, and maintaining its condition.

Our full production process executes high-volume runs using our fleet of 70+ state-of-the-art NISSEI plastic injection molding machines ranging from 40 tons of clamping pressure all the way up to 1,000 tons of clamping pressure or one of our ASB ISBM machines. Whatever your plastic injection molding needs may be, we have one or more machines that can handle it.

At Global Plastics, we offer an all-inclusive solution to meet consumer food and beverage plastic packaging injection molding needs. And we do it with a tireless focus on efficiency to keep the cost as reasonable as possible. If it’s time for your business to begin working with a plastic injection molding partner for consumer food and beverage packaging, we invite you to get in touch with Global Plastics using the contact us form on our website.

Global Plastics holds IATF 16949 certification for quality injection molded components and assemblies in the automotive supply chain.
Our ISO 13485 certification ensures quality in the manufacture of injection molded components and assemblies for the medical device industry.

Global Plastics has Safe Quality Food (SQF) certification for manufacturing food packaging materials and plastic molded food closures.