The (Shelf) Life of Pie
The shelf-life and freshness of a pie, along with most other confections and snacks, is mainly a factor of the flow of oxygen and water vapour through the walls of snack, any edible films it contains plus its packaging. Degradation in texture and taste are caused by the physical, chemical and biological changes which result from this vapour permeation.
Versaperm’s latest permeability meters allow you to resolve this problem by measuring and thus governing these permeabilities, often by building multi-layer “designer” coatings and materials which combine the various characteristics needed to control the flow of vapours across the packaging and the product. The equipment is designed for lab, development and production environments.
The meters are fast and very precise with accuracies in the Parts Per Million (PPM) or PPB ranges. The equipment can be used to test virtually any material, film, coating or package, including those with metalized foils, sachets, bags and even the edible barriers used within a product to protect different sections.
The equipment is simple to operate with a large touch screen requiring, at most, minimal training in its use. It can record and store the measurements or feed them directly through to an external system.
The Versaperm equipment can, optionally, measure not just water vapour and oxygen permeability, but the permeability for virtually any vapour including, carbon dioxide, nitrogen and other inert gasses.
A quick turn-around laboratory testing service is also available for companies which don’t need the full-time use of their own meter. For further information visit www.versaperm.com.
