Ravenwood launches Silicone Weight Calculator

Ravenwood Packaging has launched a new Silicone Weight Calculator to help the industry assess the silicone content of linerless labels. 

As the packaging industry prepares for increasing requirements around packaging composition and recyclability under the Packaging and Packaging Waste Regulation (PPWR) and Extended Producer Responsibility (EPR), understanding the contribution of individual packaging components is becoming increasingly important.

Ravenwood’s new online calculator provides a simple way to calculate the percentage of silicone in the release coating by overall label weight.

Using label dimensions, material weight and the number of silicone lines, the calculator determines the actual weight of silicone on an individual label and expresses this as a percentage of the label’s total weight.

For example, a 64.77mm-long linerless label weighing 3.69g, with three 16mm silicone lines and a silicone coating weight of 1.5gsm, contains just 0.00466g of silicone. This equates to 0.126 percent of the total label weight, below the 0.3 percent threshold for the green classification under the relevant RAM methodology.

Ravenwood’s traditional wrap-around formats including C, D, slideable and full-wrap linerless formats all achieve a green classification when assessed using the calculator.

'We wanted to take the uncertainty out of the calculation and give the industry a practical tool that can be used to assess our sustainable labels,' said Ravenwood director Dan Coe. 'The results demonstrate that the silicone release coating used in our linerless formats represents a very small proportion of the overall label weight.'

As regulatory requirements continue to evolve, Ravenwood says that providing clear, measurable data will be increasingly important in helping the packaging industry make informed choices.

Alongside the new Silicone Weight Calculator, Ravenwood’s existing CO2 Savings Calculator enables users to compare the potential CO2 savings of linerless labels against self-adhesive alternatives, providing practical, measurable insight to help make informed packaging choices.