News
HDPE or LDPE: two polyethylenes, two uses
A rigid jerrycan and a bottle you squeeze between your fingers can be made of the same molecule, ethylene. What separates them is not the starting chemistry, but the shape of the chains it has built.
2 min read
Permeability: what passes through a plastic wall
A closed bottle looks tight. At the molecular scale it never quite is: a little oxygen gets in, a little water vapour passes. The whole question is how much, and whether the product can take it.
2 min read
Recycled PET: what medicine packaging can accept
PET can be recycled, and EU law even allows it back into contact with food. So could a syrup bottle be made of recycled PET? The answer is not technical first: it is regulatory, and it is not the same for a fruit juice and for a medicine.
3 min read
What the mould leaves on the part: parting line and shrinkage
Run a fingernail over a cap: you may feel a fine line where the two halves of the mould met. Measure it: it is slightly smaller than the cavity that formed it. Those two traces say a lot about how the part was designed.
2 min read
Plastics in Morocco: what the sector makes
When plastics come up in Morocco, people often think of bags, banned since 2016. Yet the Moroccan plastics industry makes much more: agricultural films, pipes for construction, and packaging, down to the bottles that hold medicines.
2 min read
Polypropylene: the plastic of caps, pill containers and hinges
Open a pill container with a flip lid, or a flip-top cap: the small strip of plastic that joins the two parts is almost always polypropylene. This material has a rare quality: it bends without tiring.
2 min read
PET preform: the hidden part behind every bottle
Nobody buys a preform. Yet every PET bottle and flask was once one: a small thick tube, like a test tube, whose neck already carries its final thread.
2 min read
Cleanroom: what "produced in a controlled environment" means
A particle that falls into an empty bottle will stay there until it reaches the patient. That is the whole point of a controlled environment: not a cleaner workshop for its own sake, but one where contamination is controlled, measured and proven.
2 min read
"BPA free": what the label really means
"BPA free" appears on baby bottles, water bottles and boxes. The label reassures. Yet it says little about most plastic packaging, which never contained any.
2 min read
Silica gel: how a cap keeps tablets dry
An effervescent tablet starts to fizz as soon as it meets water, and the surrounding air always holds some. Between the two stand a tube, a cap and a very special material: silica gel.
3 min read
Gamma sterilisation: which plastics can take it
An eye drop bottle must be sterile, and stay so. One way to achieve this is to pass gamma rays through it, without heating it. Its plastic still has to withstand the treatment.
2 min read
Squeeze tubes: single-layer or multilayer, a question of barrier
From the outside, nothing tells two cream tubes apart. Cut through their walls: one is made of a single material, the other of several layers, some thinner than a hair, each with its own job. What separates them is what the product can tolerate.
2 min read