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About Nilkimtek
A formulation house for the flexible packaging industry. We develop heat seal and cold seal chemistry, and we prove it on the customer’s own line.
WHO WE ARE
Chemistry for the converting industry
Nilkimtek develops sealing chemistry for flexible packaging: heat seal lacquers that bond under heat, and cold seal adhesives that bond under pressure alone. Our formulations run on BOPP, PET, BOPA, CPP, PE, aluminium foil and paper.
The formulations are ours. Manufacturing is carried out to our specification and under our batch control at a partner plant. That arrangement keeps our capital in the laboratory rather than in machinery, and lets us change a formulation for one customer without stopping a line built for someone else.
What we sell is not a drum of lacquer. It is a formulation matched to your substrate, your line speed and your seal geometry.
Where our formulations come from
A short and literal description of how a Nilkimtek drum gets made. We would rather you read it here than have to ask for it.
01
We formulate
The recipe is ours. Resin system, solvent balance, additives and the release behaviour of the coating are developed and owned in-house. This is the asset the company is built on.
02
We produce under our own control
Manufacturing runs at a partner plant, to our specification and under our batch control. We are answerable for what leaves it. The plant is capacity, not the product.
03
We prove it on your line
A formulation is not finished when it passes in the laboratory. It is finished when it runs at your line speed, on your film, through your jaws, at your fill weight.
PRODUCT FAMILIES
Two ways to close a pack
Heat-activated and pressure-activated sealing chemistry. The range is deliberately narrow, because depth in two systems is worth more to a converter than a catalogue.
NILSEAL HS
Heat Seal Lacquers
Solvent-based lacquers that seal aluminium foil, polyester and laminated film onto rigid containers under heat. Four grades, from general purpose through pharmaceutical and food & beverage.
NILSEAL CS
Cold Seal Adhesives
Water-based latex that bonds only to itself, under pressure alone. No heat reaches the product, which is what makes it the choice for chocolate, ice cream and anything that softens in a sealing jaw.
A seal that passes in the lab can still fail on the line
This is one of the most common reasons a converter changes supplier, and it is why our specification does not stop at cooled seal strength.
Peel a finished, cooled seal apart and you measure seal strength: the ultimate strength of the pack, tested under ASTM F88 and reported as force per unit width. It is the number most datasheets lead with. On its own it does not tell you whether the pack survives your filling line.
On a vertical or horizontal form-fill-seal machine the pack is loaded while the seal is still molten. Product drops onto the bottom seal, film tension pulls on the vertical seal, and the conveyor handles the pouch, all before the sealant has resolidified. The property that decides whether the seal holds in that moment is hot tack, and a cooled seal test cannot detect a hot tack failure at all: by the time the specimen is conditioned and pulled, the failure mode is gone.
The third number is seal initiation temperature: the lowest jaw temperature at which the coating flows enough to form a seal. It sets the floor of your operating window. Run the jaws hotter to compensate for a high initiation temperature and you slow the line, distort the film and start scorching the print.
None of the three can be inferred from the other two, and a supplier who quotes only one of them is quoting the easy one.
THE THREE NUMBERS
What a sealing specification has to state
Seal initiation temp
Lowest jaw temperature that forms a seal
Hot tack
Strength while still molten (ASTM F1921)
Seal strength
Strength after cooling (ASTM F88)
Lab seal method
Controlled temp, pressure, dwell (ASTM F2029)
Blocking resistance
Coating must not bond to itself in the reel
ASTM F1921/F1921M-12(2023), ASTM Committee F02, primary barrier packaging
COMPLIANCE
The rules a food-contact coating has to satisfy
Our formulations are developed with reference to the European and United States food-contact frameworks. Rather than claim compliance in the abstract, here is what those frameworks actually require.
European Union
Regulation (EC) No 1935/2004
The framework regulation for all materials and articles intended to come into contact with food. Everything below sits under it.
Regulation (EU) No 10/2011
Plastics. Sets the Union list of authorised substances, specific migration limits (SML) and an overall migration limit (OML). A layer not in direct food contact may use non-listed substances, provided they are not mutagenic, carcinogenic, toxic to reproduction, or in nanoform. This is the functional-barrier logic most laminate structures depend on.
Regulation (EU) 2025/351
The amendment that has applied since 16 March 2025. It tightens the treatment of non-intentionally added substances, of material manufactured from waste, and of what the Declaration of Compliance must carry. The transitional period for material placed on the market under the previous rules closes on 16 September 2026.
Regulation (EC) No 2023/2006
Good manufacturing practice. Compliance is a production discipline, not only a formulation property.
Declaration of Compliance
The written declaration under Annex IV of 10/2011. It has to be reissued whenever composition or production changes substantially, which is exactly why a formulation change is a documentation event, not just a technical one.
United States
21 CFR 175.105: Adhesives
Permits use where the adhesive is separated from food by a functional barrier, or is held to trace amounts at seams and edge exposure for fatty and aqueous foods, with seams that stay firmly bonded without visible separation under normal use.
21 CFR 175.125: Pressure-sensitive adhesives
The section that governs cold seal chemistry, which bonds without heat and therefore without the thermal history the adhesive sections assume.
21 CFR 175.300 and 175.320
Resinous and polymeric coatings, including the separate section for coatings applied to polyolefin films.
Container labelling
A finished food-packaging adhesive has to leave the plant with the statement “food-packaging adhesive” on the container. A small requirement, and a quick way to tell whether a supplier reads the regulation or quotes it.
A technical data sheet and a safety data sheet are issued for every grade. Ask for the pair that matches your structure, not the family. The family sheet cannot answer a migration question.
PPWR moved the target, and sealing chemistry is part of it
Regulation (EU) 2025/40, the Packaging and Packaging Waste Regulation, entered into force on 11 February 2025 and has applied generally since 12 August 2026, replacing Directive 94/62/EC. It carries one requirement that reorganises the whole flexible packaging chain: all packaging placed on the EU market must be recyclable, in an economically viable way, by 2030. It also restricts substances of concern, including PFAS in food-contact packaging above defined thresholds.
For a converter this arrives as a materials problem rather than a paperwork one. The multi-material laminate that seals beautifully (printed PET, foil barrier, PE sealant) is precisely the structure recycling streams reject. The direction the industry is moving in is mono-material: an all-PE or all-PP pack that a single stream can process.
That is where the coating stops being a detail. In a mono-material structure you no longer have a low-melt PE layer sitting beneath a high-melt PET one, so the temperature gap that used to give you a comfortable sealing window is gone. The layer you are trying to seal and the layer you must not melt are the same polymer. The seal now has to be carried by a coating with a low enough seal initiation temperature to work inside that narrowed window, applied thinly enough that it does not compromise the recycling stream it was chosen to protect.
We do not sell a certificate for this. We formulate against the structure a converter is actually moving to, and we test it on their line.
HOW WE WORK
Three commitments we can be held to
Formulation stays in-house
The recipe is developed and owned in our own laboratory. That is the asset; the drum is only how it ships.
Compliance is a document, not a claim
Food-contact work is developed against the EU and FDA frameworks, and every grade ships with the TDS and SDS that let you verify it yourself.
We come to the line
Substrate, line speed, jaw temperature, dwell time. A sample that has not met those four things is not a recommendation, it is a guess.
OUR PATH
How we have grown
Founding
Production begins
Started with solvent-based ink and lamination adhesive formulations for the converting industry.
Expansion
The range widens
Water-based systems, textile printing and specialty coatings were added as the formulation library grew.
Today
Focused on sealing
The range is deliberately narrowed to the two sealing systems, heat and cold, where our formulation work goes deepest.
Tell us what you are running
Substrate, structure, line speed and the seal you need. We will tell you which grade to trial. And if we do not have the right one, we will say so.