With its “safe grip” pouch, Flexico (Henonville / France; www.flexico.com) has, for the first time, come up with a resealable bag that is equipped with a closing mechanism designed to keep children safe. The patented new closure from this flexible packaging specialist cannot be opened by children under seven in less than five minutes. Bags produced in this way are thus especially suitable for products that could constitute a danger, including pharmaceuticals, washing agents, fertilisers and herbicides as well as batteries and tobacco, says the company. Suitably adapted production is possible on conventional form-fill-seal (FFS) and packaging lines. Flexico received the “PackTheFuture” award for this development at the recent “interpack” trade fair (see Plasteurope.com of 18.05.2017).

Flexico, which is an owner-managed company, regards itself as a pioneer in resealable bags (zip and pressure closures). The group has some 500 employees at a total of seven locations – three in France and one each in Belgium, Germany, Spain and China. Sales of film products in Europe totalled EUR 75m last year. Flexico’s plants in Europe are geared to integral production, with the company extruding the films itself before printing and making them up and then processing them into bags, made primarily of LDPE and, to a lesser extent, PP. The Chinese facility, by contrast, has so far only produced point of sale displays and no film packaging.