Food Packaging Materials: Testing & Quality Assurance

This book is arguably the first one focusing on packaging material testing and quality assurance. Food Packaging Materials: Testing & Quality Assurance provides information to help food scientists, polymer chemists, and packaging technologists find practical solutions to packaging defects and to develop innovative packaging materials for food products. Knowledge of packaging material testing procedures is extremely useful in the development of new packaging materials. Unique among books on packaging, this reference focuses on basic and practical approaches for testing packaging materials.

A variety of packaging materials and technologies are being used, with glass, paper, metal, and plastics as the most important groups of materials. Material properties such as mechanical and other physical properties, permeability, sealing, and migration of substances upon food contact are determining factors for food quality, shelf life, and food safety. Therefore, food packaging materials have to be tested to ensure that they have correct properties in terms of permeability for gases, water vapor, and contaminants; of mechanical and other physical properties; and of the thickness of main components and coating layers.

This book has been designed to shed light on food packaging material testing in view of packaging integrity, shelf life of products, and conformity with current regulations. This comprehensive book, written by a team of specialists in the specific areas of food packaging, package testing, and food contact regulations, deals with the problems in a series of well-defined chapters. It covers the relations between packaging properties and shelf life of products and describes testing methods for plastics, metal, glass, and paper, including the areas of vibration, permeation, and migration tests. It will be of benefit for students, scientists, and professionals in the area of food packaging.

Preeti Singh has obtained her master’s degree (food technology) and PhD (dairytechnology) from leading institutions in India. She has worked as a scientist at DefenceFood Research Laboratory in Mysore, India, for 2 years. In 2008, she joined the chair ofFood Packaging Technology, Technical University of Munich (TUM), as a researchscientist. Later, she joined the Fraunhofer Institute for Food Process Engineering and Packaging IVV, Freising, Germany. She has been actively publishing on food packa-ging, contributing 28 international papers and 15 technical papers, and is currentlycoeditor of two forthcoming books on packaging. She is also managing editor ofFood Packaging & Shelf Life, published by Elsevier Science, UK.

Ali Abas Wani is a senior researcher at the Fraunhofer Institute for Process Engi-neering and Packaging, Freising, Germany. Born and educated in India, hereceived his master’s degree (food technology) and PhD (food technology)from leading Indian universities. Since 2006, he has been a senior assistant pro-fessor at the Islamic University of Science and Technology, Awantipora, India,where he was responsible for establishing the Department of Food Technologyand also initiated several key food science programs in the region. Additionally,he is establishing a food testing center at the Islamic University of Science and Tech-nology, Awantipora. Dr. Wani is also a cochair for the European Hygienic Engineer-ing Design Group (EHEDG) representing the Indian regional section. He is thecofounder and editor-in-chief ofFood Packaging & Shelf Life, published by ElsevierScience, UK. Dr. Wani has published numerous international papers, book chapters,coedited books, and conference papers. His research focus is on the development offunctional ingredients and measurement of foodquality. In addition to close associa-tionwithmanyscientific organizations in the area of food science and technology, heis an active reviewer forCarbohydrate  Polymers,Food  Chemistry,LWT–FoodScience  and  Technology,Journal  of  Agricultural  Food  Chemistry, and many otherscientific journals of repute.

Horst-Christian Langowski is a professor and the chair of Food Packaging Tech-nology, Dean of Studies, at the TUM School of Life Sciences Weihenstephan,Technical University of Munich (TUM), andthe director of the Fraunhofer Institutefor Process Engineering and Packaging, Fraunhofer IVV, Freising, Germany.He received his diploma degree in physics in 1980 and PhD in 1989, both fromthe University of Hannover, Germany. He worked with the Philips Group from1981 to 1991 as a development engineerand project manager before joiningFraunhofer IVV in 1991. Since then, he has been deeply involved in food packagingand shelf-life research at both TUM and Fraunhofer IVV. Professor Langowski hasreceived numerous research grants and presented his work at several internationalconferences. He has published many research papers, technical papers, patents, andbook chapters, and has supervised many master’s and doctoral theses. Among other functions, he is a member of the management board of the BayerischeStaatsbrauerei Weihenstephan and a member of the advisory board of the groupon extrusion technology within the Verein Deutscher Ingenieure (VDI). He isalso the cofounder and editor-in-chief ofFood Packaging and Shelf Life,whichis published by Elsevier Science, UK.