Why Choose All-Temperature Label Adhesives For Your Packaging

Learn the importance of temperature performance in end-use labels and how all-temperature label adhesives can ensure durability, processing efficiencies and sustainability. Learn why choosing the right all-temperature label adhesive is crucial for maintaining brand trust and explore Bostik's innovative solutions tailored to your specific needs.

As a label manufacturer, temperature performance can be an important factor to consider with an end-use label if it is designed to:

Convey storage or transportation instructions
Provide product expiration dates
Cite safety warnings for food and pharmaceuticals

However, if the end-use label cannot offer high performance under various temperature conditions, it may mean that the label becomes unreadable to users, causing them to lose trust with brand owners.
A key part in your end-use label offering high performance through various temperatures is by considering your label adhesive. Learn about all-temperature label adhesives, why you should choose them and how the right all-temperature label adhesive solution can further address your needs.

The Value of an All-Temperature Label Adhesive

An all-temperature label adhesive solution can provide several benefits to your end-use labels.

Durability:

All-temperature label adhesives are specifically formulated to prevent the label from losing adhesion, peeling off or becoming illegible in:

Extreme temperatures, including both high and low temperatures: These adhesives’ temperature resistance capabilities allow you to use the same label adhesive technology for either extreme cold or hot temperatures and maintain the same strength levels.
Changing temperature conditions: All-temperature adhesives maintain performance throughout evolving temperatures that they may experience during transport.

With these capabilities, all-temperature label adhesive technology helps the end-use label provide longevity, as it can remain intact and readable throughout harsh temperature conditions.

It’s also common for all-temperature label adhesives to include these features in their formulations to protect against temperature variations:

Barrier protection: Barrier agents or additives can help form a protective layer over the adhesive surface to prevent moisture from impacting the adhesive strength. This helps the adhesive itself maintain strength over time in environments where humidity or condensation could occur due to various temperatures or changes in temperature.
Chemical resistance: Crosslinking agents or polymer modifiers in the formulation can help protect the adhesive from chemical interactions that may potentially compromise its integrity. This means the label can remain intact if exposed to chemicals, solvents or cleaning agents.
UV stabilizers: These compounds can help mitigate the impacts of UV radiation due to sunlight. UV stabilizers absorb or scatter UV rays to help prevent adhesive degradation. This also contributes to maintaining label readability, especially in outdoor locations or places with high exposure to sunlight.

Processing Efficiencies:

All-temperature label adhesives are formulated to protect against high shear forces, which results in:

Oozing resistance: Strong internal cohesion helps the adhesive resist flow or displacement under mechanical stress, which prevents oozing and yields consistent, uniform bond thickness. This allows the adhesive to maintain structural integrity and resist squeezing out from the bond line.

Additionally, all-temperature label adhesives offer substrate versatility and are compatible with paper, plastic film, metal, glass, wood and corrugate. This helps achieve:

Cost savings: The ability to use one all-temperature label adhesive technology on multiple substrates allows you to utilize one adhesive technology on your production line for numerous applications.
Opportunity for increased revenue: Further, it can also enable you to expand into various product opportunities you may not have been able to consider before due to temperature-related concerns.

Sustainability:

All-temperature label adhesives also offer capabilities that will help reduce your environmental footprint and enhance circularity.

Reduced energy usage: The ability to rely on one all-temperature label adhesive for multiple applications allows you to reduce overall downtime for changeouts, resulting in a streamlined assembly that helps decrease energy usage over time.
Decreased material waste: Since an all-temperature label adhesive will maintain adhesive strength through various temperature ranges, the overall amount of label replacements due to damage or poor performance will also reduce. This helps decrease overall material waste or additional needs for replacement materials.
Enhanced recycling capabilities: If desired, all-temperature label adhesives can be designed to provide wash-off capabilities for PET materials. Clean removal of a wash-off label adhesive allows the PET to move through the recycling stream cleanly to increase overall circular recycling.

Additional Advantages of Using All-Temperature Solutions in Label Adhesives

Label compatibility: All-temperature label adhesives are specifically formulated to provide high adhesion to substrates commonly used in labeling such as paper, plastic and corrugate. They also provide flexibility in label customization to help ensure the label layers all work together for the specific application needs.
Regulatory compliance: All-temperature label adhesives are often developed to address industry standards and regulatory requirements, particularly for food, pharmaceutical and logistical applications. This includes trial testing for adhesion, safety and performance.

Choosing the Right All-Temperature Label Adhesive Solution

All-temperature label adhesives are available in general purpose (GPP) and wash-off categories and utilize waterborne acrylic pressure sensitive adhesive (PSA) technology. However, it’s important to understand how they may provide different advantages:

General Purpose (GPP)

Why Choose a GPP All-Temperature Label Adhesive

Label versatility: A GPP all-temperature label adhesive is designed to help you rely on one adhesive solution for all your label needs, no matter what temperatures the application may endure. Therefore, you know it is customized to address specific label requirements, such as compatibility amongst label layers. This is not always guaranteed with an adhesive that is not specifically designed for label applications.
Food compliance: GPP all-temperature label adhesives can be formulated to meet FDA regulatory standards, allowing you the assurance that your end-use label will be safe for applications such as meat packaging. While an adhesive may be capable of adhering to a food package, it may not meet the same FDA compliance guidelines to ensure safety.

Compatible with permanent paper, thermal paper and clear film, the right GPP all-temperature label adhesive can provide your application:

Low-temperature durability: Designed for applications including meat packaging, freezer, wine and beer labels, the right GPP all-temperature label adhesives provide a service temperature range between -50°F (-46°C) to 125°F (52°C), helping to protect the end-use label against cold temperatures and any potential humidity or moisture. This durability also helps expand the end-use label’s lifespan to reduce overall material waste for replacements.
High-speed coating: As a coater-ready, emulsion solution, the right GPP all-temperature label adhesives provide consistent, uniform bond thickness, which helps resist oozing under mechanical stress. This helps provide increased drying rates to improve processing speeds.
Improved efficiencies: Compatible with slot die, wire rod and roll coating equipment, the right GPP all-temperature label adhesives allow you to use one reliable solution for numerous applications on the same production line. This also results in less downtime for changeouts to help reduce overall energy usage.

Wash-Off:

Why Choose an All-Temperature, Wash-Off Label Adhesive

Clean Removal: An all-temperature, wash-off label adhesive is specifically designed to remove all adhesive residue from plastic packaging to help increase circular recycling. Other solutions may not be able to guarantee there will be no adhesive residue left behind during the recycling process.

Choosing the right all-temperature, wash-off label adhesive technology can help you meet general temperature requirements while also helping to increase circular recycling with PET materials and provide:

Enhanced durability: The right all-temperature, wash-off label adhesive technology remains tacky down to 0°F (-17°C). This allows you to use the same wash-off label adhesive solution for room temperature, cold-fill or freezer-grade label applications.
Simplified processing: Compatible with water-based emulsion equipment, the right all-temperature, wash-off label adhesives are formulated to be coater-ready, helping to streamline processes and allow you to use equipment you already own. It will also perform at the same levels as other wash-off label adhesive solutions without pretreatment.
APR-approved PET recyclability: The right all-temperature, wash-off label adhesives are proven to meet or exceed the Association of Plastic Recyclers (APR)’s critical guidance for PET recycling, meaning the label will cleanly remove from the PET package and move it through the recycling stream. This assurance helps you save valuable time and resources required in testing for APR-approval yourself. Using this APR-approved solution also shows brand owners you are prioritizing methods that can help them increase overall circular recycling with their PET packaging.

How Bostik Can Help Provide the Right All-Temperature Label Adhesives

With the most robust portfolio of PSAs on the market, Bostik offers both all-temperature GPP and wash-off label adhesives based on waterborne acrylic PSA technologies that can address your specific application performance needs.

Through our Flexcryl™ product line, we offer:

GPP All-Temperature Label Adhesive: Our GPP solution provides high speed processes as a coater-ready, waterborne acrylic PSA emulsion. With a minimum application temperature range between -10°F (-23°C) and 0°F (-17°C), our offering is designed for permanent and thermal paper, clear film and other label applications that require high performance at low temperatures, such as food packaging. Bostik’s GPP all-temperature label adhesives are compliant with 175 and 105 FDA regulatory standards to help ensure food safety.
APR-Approved, All-Temperature Wash-off Label Adhesive: Bostik’s innovative Flexcryl™ ClearCycle 1000 is developed for PET packaging. This waterborne acrylic PSA solution is compatible with thermoform, bottle and clamshell applications. Proven to meet or exceed APR Critical Guidance Criteria, it favors biaxially-oriented polypropylene (BOPP) facestock to provide a clean PET separation.

Along with these solutions, you’ll also receive:

Technical support: Our team of experts will help determine the right all-temperature label adhesive technology based on your performance needs and coating capabilities. We help with trial testing so you can continue regular production schedules until you choose the right solution.
Troubleshooting: We are here to help you address any issues that may arise on your coating lines, helping identify ways to streamline production.

Are you ready to address specific application needs with an all-temperature label adhesive solution? Contact a Bostik expert to learn how our all-temperature label adhesive for GPP and wash-off can enhance your end-use label performance.