About Wax Packaging for Food

The food industry uses wax-coated packaging to protect all kinds of food products against deterioration. This packaging includes cartons and boxes, flexible wrappers, and rigid containers.

Coating Paper

• Waxed-coated packaging usually consists of paper, which is lightweight and inexpensive, but is not a good barrier. Coating it with wax increases its strength, stiffness and rigidity. It also improves its resistance to moisture, air, odor and grease.

Types of Wax

• Wax coatings typically consist of food-grade, tasteless, and odorless paraffin wax or blends of paraffin, plus other waxes and additives to produce gloss, resistance to friction and sealability by heat.

Waxed Packaging

• Wax-coated packaging includes corrugated containers and boxes, folding cartons, wrappers, bags, pouches, cups, lids, drums and tubes.

Corrugated Boxes

• When corrugated boxes get wet, the wax protects their paperboard and preserves their rigidity, making these good containers for produce, meat, poultry and seafood. Food packaging ranks as the biggest application for this type of waxed container.

Coating Boxes

• The waxing methods for corrugated boxes include spraying and curtain coating. Spraying consists of saturating the corrugated board with a thick layer of wax. Curtain coating means passing the board through a curtain of falling wax.