 Abstract | Packaging plays an important role in protecting and preserving the quality of food and is
therefore significant in any food manufacturing and distribution process. The shelf life of
any food is limited due to the occurrence of many deteriorative processes and reactions
within the food material. These include physical and chemical reactions and interactions
between food and the ambient environment across the packaging material. Milk powder
like any other food, is prone to such reactions and interactions with package resulting in
degradation of its edible quality due to changes in smell, colour and texture, which
ultimately renders it nutritionally and economically unacceptable.
During distribution and storage the packaging system needs to stabilize the powder by
ensuring optimum storage conditions are maintained. To ensure maximum shelf life it is
essential to apply packaging systems that are optimally designed, to meet the
requirements with respect to manufacturing as well as product protection in the
distribution environment.
In this thesis, the interactions between ambient environmental conditions, packaging
material properties and the shelf life of a particular filled milk powder were investigated.
Consequently, the requirements for a packaging system that can provide a two-year shelf
life for the powder were determined. The filled milk powder is manufactured and
packaged in bulk in Europe, imported into Africa via sea freight containers to be
repacked into small portion packs and distributed in multiple African countries. Because
of Africa’s tropical conditions the packaged product is exposed to rather high levels of
relative humidity and temperature during transportation and storage which influences the
stability of the powder.
The storage stability of the filled milk powder along with the barrier characteristics of the
packaging was assessed in order to evaluate the theoretical shelf life of the powder in its
current packaging system. |
