"In the last few years we see that customers have started to look for closures that match their bag size and weight and product," said Patrycja Czajkowska, internal sales service at Polish closure maker Elplast. "Larger bags need multi-profile zippers with high opening forces from the product side. Fine powder products need powder resistant zippers with special profile designs that will take some product and still reclose multiple times. Sensitive filling lines need zippers with very low opening forces from the consumer side so every premade bag is opened for filling."
Elplast claims to be the largest press-to-close zipper manufacturer in Europe, with plans to expand at home and abroad.
"In the Polish plant we have capacity to make one billion metres a year and a few weeks ago we started the expansion of our plant to double production capacity by 2020. We also have a plant in the US with the same annual capacity, which will start production in February 2016," said Czajkowska. "There are customers that see colours as a fresh option; we can match, for example, their brand colour or one of the bag's external colours. Bearing in mind that zippers are becoming more functional and complicated, brands want to show the consumers that there is a zipper in the bag and how it looks."
The increasing need for quality closures continues unabated, particularly in sectors that are able to substitute rigid with flexible packaging formats. Consumers are becoming aware that there are multiple parameters that make a closure functional; opening and closing forces, sealing layers and materials to name but a few. It is a market that can only continue to develop on an innovative and economical level.
