Food packaging material, built to the product — not the catalogue.

Food packaging pouches are made from multi-layer laminates rather than a single film. A typical structure has three functional layers: an outer print web (polyester, BOPP, nylon or paper) that carries the artwork and gives the pack stiffness, a middle barrier layer (aluminium foil, metallised PET or metallised BOPP) that blocks oxygen, moisture and light, and an inner sealant layer (LDPE, LLDPE or cast polypropylene) that forms the heat seal. A common food structure is PET 12µ / Met-PET 12µ / LLDPE 80µ. Which combination is correct depends entirely on what is going inside the pouch.

For ground spices and blended masala, an aluminium foil laminate is the appropriate specification — typically PET 12µ / Alu 9µ / PE 80µ. Ground spice carries volatile oils that are responsible for aroma and pungency, and those oils are lost through oxygen ingress rather than moisture. Aluminium foil is the only commercial layer that is a total oxygen and light barrier, which is why turmeric packed in foil holds its colour and masala packed in foil holds its aroma across a full shelf-life cycle. Metallised PET is a lower-cost alternative that performs well for shorter shelf lives, but it is a compromise on aroma retention, not an equivalent.

Aluminium foil is a solid metal layer, typically 7 to 12 microns, and it is a total barrier — nothing passes through it. Metallised PET is a polyester film with an extremely thin layer of aluminium vapour-deposited onto its surface, and it delivers a high barrier but not an absolute one. The practical gap is roughly an order of magnitude on oxygen transmission. Foil is heavier, costs more, and can develop flex cracks if the pack is repeatedly bent; metallised PET is lighter, cheaper, more flex-resistant, and gives a brighter metallic finish. For nine-month shelf lives on oil-bearing products, foil. For three-month snack turns, metallised.

This question comes up constantly and the honest answer is that "FSSAI approved packaging material" is not a category that exists. The Food Safety and Standards (Packaging) Regulations set out the material and migration requirements that a food-contact pack must satisfy, and the obligation to meet them sits with the food business operator whose product goes inside. What a packaging manufacturer can do is supply material of the correct class and specification, manufactured under a certified food safety management system, along with the material information your QA team needs for its own compliance file. G T Pack Industries manufactures under ISO 22000:2018. If your specification calls for a particular declaration or test report, raise it at the inquiry stage.

Shelf life is a function of the product, the barrier, the fill environment and the storage condition — packaging alone does not set it. As a working guide, an aluminium foil laminate can support twelve months or more for dry, oxygen-sensitive products; a metallised structure typically supports six to nine months; a transparent PET/PE structure supports three to six months for products that are not oxygen-sensitive. Nitrogen flushing and oxygen scavengers extend all three. The reliable way to confirm a target is an accelerated shelf-life study on your actual product in your actual structure.

Frozen food packaging is specified around low-temperature mechanical performance rather than barrier. Polyester becomes brittle below zero and cracks at the seal; nylon retains flexibility and puncture resistance, which is why nylon-based laminates such as Nylon 15µ / LLDPE 90µ are standard for frozen and vacuum-packed items. Sealant thickness is increased because frozen product is often dense and sharp-edged. For frozen items packed in paper-based formats — freezer paper for meat and fish portions — single-side PE coated paper is used with the coated face against the product.

Total laminate thickness for food packaging typically falls between 60 and 200 microns, but the number itself is not the specification — the layer breakdown is. A 100-micron structure made of PET 12µ / Met-PET 12µ / LLDPE 76µ performs completely differently from a 100-micron structure of PET 12µ / PE 88µ, because the barrier layer is doing the work. Sealant thickness scales with fill weight: roughly 40 to 60 microns for light snack packs, 80 to 100 microns for retail stand-up pouches, and 120 microns or more for heavy pet food and staples.

Dry fruit and nuts need an oxygen barrier because of their oil content, and a heavier sealant because of the fill weight and the sharp edges of the product. A standard specification is PET 12µ / Alu 7µ / LLDPE 100µ in a stand-up pouch with a zipper, since the consumer opens the pack repeatedly rather than in one use. Where the brand wants product visibility, a window panel can be incorporated — though every square centimetre of window is a square centimetre without a barrier, so the window is placed and sized deliberately rather than for looks alone.

Yes. We print up to 8 colours by rotogravure in-house, using food-grade ink systems. Rotogravure is cylinder-based, which means there is a one-time cylinder cost per design but excellent registration consistency across repeat runs — a meaningful advantage for food brands that reorder the same artwork several times a year and need the shade to match. Finish options include gloss, matt, soft-touch matt, spot gloss and registered matt-gloss. Artwork is pre-press checked and colour-proofed before the cylinder is engraved.

Conventional multi-material laminates — polyester with foil, or polyester with polyethylene — are difficult to recycle because the layers cannot be economically separated, and they generally go to energy recovery. Mono-material structures are the answer where recyclability is a brand commitment: an all-polyethylene laminate, for example, is recyclable through PE streams, and barrier performance is recovered through metallisation or coating rather than through mixing polymer families. Mono-material PE structures are available on request. The honest trade-off is that they deliver a lower barrier than a foil laminate, so the shelf-life target has to be checked against the structure before the switch is made.

A centre seal pouch has a continuous fin seal running down the back and is formed on a vertical form-fill-seal machine at high speed — it is the cheapest format per unit and the standard for chips, namkeen and extruded snacks. A stand-up pouch has a bottom gusset that lets the pack stand on a shelf, takes a zipper for reclose, and offers the largest print face relative to film used. Centre seal wins on cost and line speed; stand-up wins on shelf presence and consumer convenience. The choice usually follows the retail channel: high-volume impulse product runs centre seal, premium shelf product runs stand-up.

Minimum order quantity depends on the structure, whether the job is printed or unprinted, and how many designs are involved, because cylinder cost is amortised across the run. Unprinted laminate carries a lower minimum than custom-printed material, and repeat orders against an existing cylinder set are lower again than a first run. Rather than quote a number that will not match your job, we confirm MOQ against your specific structure and artwork at the inquiry stage. Sample material for line trials is available before any bulk commitment.