Liberty Intercept Blog

A recent article in Packaging News prompted me to consider our role in the packaging industry as innovators and promoters of more efficient materials and processes. Rather than consider ourselves the victims of "wrap ragers" or "packaging bashers", we in the industry must be arbiters of change.

I read an article in Packaging News this week admonishing people within the packaging industry (specifically food packaging, but it could apply to all) to stop playing the victim. That phrasing took me by surprise briefly, but I understand. Packaging, particularly in the retail realm, is often thought of as wasteful and unnecessary. According to this article, at the Ardagh Group’s sustainable packaging event in Paris, Professor Dr. Michael Braungart told Packaging News, "the packaging industry is saving more lives than any other industry, by protecting food and ensuring longer shelf-life for food." He went on to accuse the packaging industry of "guilt management", for example, "we were 100% bad and now we are 90% bad and our goal is to minimise our impact".

Liberty Packaging enjoys long-term affiliations with some first class innovative organizations. We've been involved with NDIA New England, IEEE, and ThomasNet (formerly Thomas Register) for many years, and more recently have joined forces with both SME and Women in Packaging.

We’re often asked: when considering Intercept Technology heavy duty flexible film barrier packaging for the storage and/or shipping of electronics, which product would be best?  Intercept barrier protection is currently used for all sorts of electronics such as complete equipment, circuit cards, printed wire boards, chassis and frames, even the most sensitive devices and chips.

Here are three Intercept materials that protect electronics:

Manufacturing companies seeking to save time by eliminating the application of protective oils to their products may want to consider heavy duty barrier packaging as a solution. Besides time savings, other benefits to this approach include cleaner products and cleaner more streamlined operations.

My son is a guitar player. He started playing the guitar at eight years old and is now playing professionally.  Along with our drummer son, as a family we would spend many hours at music stores looking at, and eventually buying, musical instruments, parts, and gear. Always good for holiday and birthday “extra” gifts, D’Addario guitar strings were well received by our son and compared to other musical products, at very reasonable prices in the string gauges he prefers. Our guitar string purchases were personally pleasing to me because D’Addario uses a product line we represent with our Liberty Packaging business, Corrosion Intercept® packaging. For all guitar players reading this, the copper-colored inner-pack bags that protect the strings in storage and shipping Corrosion Intercept barrier protection.

Intercept Technology™ barrier packaging has found many markets internationally, particularly in Europe. Bell Labs invented Intercept heavy duty barrier bags and films to help them solve problems with corrosion on the printed wire boards (PWB) metals. In the late 1980s, AT&T manufacturing, which later became Lucent and is now Alcatel-Lucent protected their PWB in Static Intercept barrier packaging which also has the properties of perfect static dissipation protection (ESD - electro-static discharge).

When looking at all the Intercept Technology barrier packaging photos across the web, (there are many) as well as on the Liberty Packaging web site, surely it can be a bit confusing.  Why are there dark-colored Intercept films, copper-colored Intercept film, and white-colored Intercept films? How can small, sensitive items and such large items as helicopters and drilling rigs be protected with the same material? One might ask “how can our important products be protected by the same packaging as other products that don’t even look like ours?”

Liberty Packaging representatives have recently been consulting with companies about the option to have cleaner operations by reducing or eliminating the application of protective oils to their products.

In manufacturing, these protective oils act as a barrier to corrosive gases, primarily for the protection of metals.  Liberty Packaging offers a free consultation to companies who want a cleaner operation and product. Of course, not all operations can eliminate oils - they are necessary in some instances - but our philosophy as concerned citizens and manufacturing business advocates is that we can help eliminate some of the oil dependency.

Anyone who has attended a trade show understands that exhibitors are there to woo potential clients who will be impressed enough to purchase their wares. It's about sales. Two weeks ago, I attended IMX 2011 – “The Interactive Manufacturing Experience” in Las Vegas, a new type of manufacturing-centered trade show, focused on educating the attendees. The over-arching message there was one of a promising future for American manufacturing. Of the exhibitors and attendees I met, all said their businesses had largely recovered from the mess of our economy, and each was there to participate in discussions about innovation moving forward. With about 5000 registered attendants, and exhibitors representing large and small manufacturing concerns, this IMX 2011 provides a good compass for our manufacturing future here in the U.S.