Inside the materials science lab at SIG, Northlake

1. Research and development (R&D)

This type covers a majority of the work of the Materials Science Lab. “Really this just means anything new,” explains Berger. “Whether it’s something we think might save costs, such as downgauging a material, or it’s a brand new type of customer, we have a multitude of different tests to support our R&D efforts.”

“Every R&D project goes through at least two or three iterations,” says Mueller.  “So take a new fitment for example: the first shots come out of the mold, it goes to the Materials Science Lab, and we find out that the functional forces are too high or too low, or that we’re not getting proper hermetic seals. So it goes back, the team makes modifications to the mold, and then it comes back to the Lab. This developmental loop is inherent in every innovation process. At the beginning of every R&D project, specifications are set for performance, and the team continues refining the product until it hits the specification goal.”

“This refining is ultimately about product protection,” Berger says. “Whether the lab is measuring for abuse resistance or validating an expected shelf life, the Materials Science Lab team works to make sure the product maintains quality throughout that time.” The team will often perform taste panel tests to help quantify issues of quality. “For pouches, we’ve been looking at color retention,” Berger explains. “Does the product stay the same color it was when it was packed? Does it retain Vitamin C, D, and other nutrients? And what does that performance look like from the date of filling all the way through the end of shelf-life?”

3. Commercial support

This type of project involves helping enable customers to find the right solutions for their products. Berger says, “It could be working with the Packaging Applications team, it could be working with our commercial staff, or it could be working directly with customers.” Commercial support covers a variety of tests done to observe compatibility between customers’ products, dispensers, and the packaging materials.

We have a broad portfolio of products, and customers are often looking to expand into new markets for their product. Cold brew coffee in bag-in-box is one example of a newly expanding market, and as Berger explains, “testing would involve putting cold brew coffee into our products to make sure it’s compatible with the films, that there’s no degradation of performance—it’s really doing all the work to confirm that it’s a good fit for the product, the process, and the customer’s application.”

Another type of commercial support work is what Berger calls competitive analysis. “We have equipment that can analyze resin samples from materials that we didn’t create. So we can take material from a competitor, break down that material and find out what’s in it. This helps help our customers because we understand what their competitors are offering, as well as how we can compete and price our products more accurately,” explains Berger.

4. Quality support

Another way to think of quality support is investigating customer complaints. Berger explains, “We help customers to look at what went wrong, and figure out what might have happened and where it might have happened. We take any information we can from the customers—which usually comes through our Packaging Applications team bringing samples to the lab—and we analyze to figure out what went wrong. Then we can determine if it’s an issue that we can correct, like a bag-making issue, or if it’s something that happened on the filling machine while the bag was being filled, or something that happened while at the end user.” This type of work helps correct errors, support customers, and keep our product quality high.