Sealed Air holds birthday party for Bubble Wrap at Pack Expo

CHICAGO - To help prove a point, Sealed Air Corp. (Saddle Brook, NJ) held a birthday party at Pack Expo Sunday. The company wants the packaging industry to know that, even though the name "bubble wrap" is commonly tossed around as a generic product, Bubble Wrap® is, in fact, a registered trademark of Sealed Air.

The Bubble Wrap brand of packaging was invented by the founders of Sealed Air Corp. in 1960. Alfred Fielding and Marc Chavannes created the first-ever air cellular cushioning material, which was initially considered as a textured wallpaper. However, the twosome soon realized the product was ideal for protective packaging.

In 1960, Bubble Wrap brand cushioning was formally introduced to the world as a packaging material for cushioning, interleaving and surface protection applications.

Rohn Shellenberger, product manager-Air Cellular for Sealed Air, in addressing a crowd of onlookers at Pack Expo, stressed that Bubble Wrap brand cushioning, unlike many other imitators, is made with a unique nylon barrier layer in the bubble. The company proprietary Barrier Bubble® technology coextrudes a nylon layer between two layers of polyethylene. Sealed Air says that the nylon used in Bubble Wrap brand cushioning is 100 times more resistant to the passage of air than polyethylene, enabling the product to retain the air in its bubbles longer and under greater pressure and, ultimately, keeping its cushioning power for a greater length of time.

By Bill Noone
Managing Editor, PackagingNetwork.com