of industrial activities and research programmes with companies, other than the fundamental medical science and technology where I do much of my research, I cover packaging and non‐pharmaceutical or food materials and their design, potential reuse, and recycling.
This book is targeted at a wide‐ranging audience yet with specific interests relevant to a programme of study of routine handling, use, and testing of packaging forms or packaging materials. Most people are acquainted with packaging at some level but this book does not deal with everyday concepts; rather, it provides an insight into areas of interest where specific scientific and technological knowledge of packaging is needed for what essentially constitutes ‘consumed’ products. The book, however, is pragmatically broader in its remit than this and also details common and rarer packaging types and their properties and relevant technologies of manufacture, method of forming, and design for purpose. The three major fields covered are those of pharmaceutical, food, and medical device packaging (pack, seals, and closures) and the underlying processes used to create them. The book is simultaneously intended as a technical reference and as a study aid. To this end there are some calculations, problems, and dilemmas at the end of the book to help users in what is now a tried, tested, and popular format and a form of subject revision. This book should be useful for undergraduates and postgraduates alike in that it covers three of the top six big industries that make use of or derive products (medicines, food, medical devices, agriculture, petrochemical, electronics) and that are likely to be faced by modern science graduates with a suitable ‘flavouring’ of current research and some experimental data to cut across preliminary and advanced study. Naturally, being of interest to postgraduates means that this book will also be of interest to industry experts, although I would not profess to provide an authoritative guide to individual material or packaging forms in the mere several hundred pages provided here. The unique nature of this book lies in the simultaneous discussion of inter‐related fields and of chemistry, physics, engineering, and therapeutic aspects within the same volume. Foods, pharmaceuticals and medical devices and the packaging that protects them account for more than half of all the packaging needs of the Western world. I use my expertise in nano‐materials, physics, biomaterials, chemistry, chemical engineering, manufacturing, industrial practice, medicine, and food technology to populate this book more appropriately to the reader covered by the remit as indicated primarily in the full title.
The book's strengths lie in its accessible format and design that covers key topics that feature in so many professional and specific modular courses cover this subject theme. Unfortunately, many books only discuss small aspects of a larger picture; where they do describe the range of products they often miss out on application. My interest, along with most industrialists, is in emphasising the applicability of various aspects of packaging science and technology, yet illustrating that final use is dictated by the quality and chemical nature of the raw materials (ore, oil, minerals, and biomaterials) or starting materials (plastics, tinplate, glass, and paper) and the means of evaluating their suitability (quality indices, performance, and stability testing). I consider that a major asset of this book is its universality in such a synopsis of a broad yet specific content. The book is aimed primarily at all pharmaceutical, medical science and food technology courses at undergraduate and postgraduate level and ‘packaging industry’ professionals needing referential information and rapid exposure to ‘packaging and application’ relevant information at the graduate and postgraduate level. Special physical features include problems and solutions, numerical values, assertions and projections, illustrations, and an attempt at simplification along with a suitable degree of technical content.
The idea for this book came to me some time ago during discussions with my dear long‐standing friends and former colleagues – Dr James O'Reilly, Dr Ewen Brierley, Dr Martin Wickham, Dr Michel Cornec, Dr Romain Briandet, Professor Reinhard Miller, Dr David Clark, Professor Brian Robinson, Professor Peter Wilde, Yves Popineau, and Professor Daniel Bonn – during a brief period when we worked together in the UK, Germany, and France. Our discussions – both serious and jocular – prompted me to start thinking about a technical book worthy of writing that might combine chemistry, physics, and engineering with my more newly discovered and passionate area of interest of sustainability and recycling in the context of industrial processes. More than 20 years on and after writing two ‘pharmaceutical technology’ books en route, I finally got around to writing a book covering materials, processes, and design applications despite some very serious health hiccoughs along the way. The person who got me through this most difficult spell and barrage of illnesses, ultimately achieving complete recovery, was my wonderful wife, Dr Ralitza Valtcheva‐Sarker. I guess part of the credit for pushing me to write this book also has to go to colleagues past and those present at my current place of employment in the School of Pharmacy and Biomolecular Sciences at the University of Brighton, UK. My colleagues shared out new lectures in medical and pharmaceutical packaging and pharmaceutical and medical device technology to me and, therefore, pushed me into an area not studied at length before.
Dipak K. Sarker
Brighton
2020
1 Historical Perspective and Evolution
CHAPTER MENU
Abstract
This chapter covers a brief chronology of the development of packaging materials and types of packaging containers through time. The chapter goes on to survey packaging use in terms of containment or collation of units. Following on from this is the fundamental classification of packaging and its role in terms of providing information. The chapter then moves on to a brief description of the various types and subtypes of packaging materials.
Keywords use; application; marketing; benefits; classification; identity; novel materials;
1.1 Introduction
1.1.1 The Chronology of Packaging Development
The use of packaging is often thought of as an industrial‐age concept but this is entirely untrue. In more ancient times products of economic or nutritional value were always wrapped in a suitable material to convey the need to protect the contents. The Roman emperors and Byzantine kings frequently wrapped precious goods in all manner of materials from woven rattan baskets to carved and gilded in‐laid ebony boxes. Expensive luxury goods such as chalices and ceremonial goods are almost always stored in a suitable presentation case that demonstrates the value of the product contained within. Perfumes, chrism oils, and ceremonial jewellery have always been contained in sculpted and carved lidded boxes and glazed pottery. However, the use of bespoke packaging is really a modern‐age phenomenon. Packaging use began with leaves and birch bark and other natural materials. In antiquity and prehistoric times humans wrapped their foods in crudely fashioned carriers and containers and also pelts and hides. The mass production of containers later involved woven materials (e.g. rushes and reeds) to create baskets and carriers and also textiles, pottery, and bronze amphora and carved objects (e.g. ivory, antler horn, and wood). Recent estimates place ‘crude glass’ or vitrified materials and wood packaging use to at least 3000 BCE and these artefacts come from the Indus Valley civilisations and Mesopotamia.
In the modern era, that is, since the early 1900s, paper and cardboard have become extremely important packaging materials. Following the invention of plastics, the emerging industries making commercial packaging substituted plastic for paper as a primary packaging material. Many modern environmentalists hanker back
