Polymers in Contact with food - Food contact testing equipment & procedures

The laboratories at Smithers Rapra are equipped with an impressive array of state-of-the-art liquid chromatography/mass spectrometry (LC-MS) & gas chromatography/mass spectrometry (GC-MS) equipment & GC-MS XL Inert Source. The company is UKAS accredited (Accreditation No 0067) for migration testing of materials in contact with food to CEN methods & in-house procedure.

Designers, manufacturers & end-users of plastics used in packaging & other food contact applications, must understand the properties of different materials, their advantages & drawbacks along with the critical relationship of material, grade, product design & process. It is also necessary to test the finished product & clearly define a manufacturing specification to avoid the expense & damage to business reputation of product failures & potential litigation.

Smithers Rapra are at the forefront of both interpreting the appropriate legislation & developing analytical methods for examining the potential extractables from all types of food contact materials. We combine practical expertise & extensive laboratory facilities & have a long established reputation for providing our clients with compliance testing, new materials development, research, registering new materials or additives & also data generation for submission to regulatory authorities.

We can detect & quantify a wide range of difficult to analyse extractable species from polymeric materials. In particular, we can help develop appropriate methodology for demonstrating the regulatory compliance of packaging & elastomeric materials used in contact with food.