Packaging for smoking articles with sealed enclosure

Details Packaging for smoking articles with sealed enclosure Packaging for smoking articles with sealed enclosure

1999-05-12

2000-12-26

Gehman, Bryon P.

Special receptacle or package

For tobacco, pipe or cigarette holder

With closure

206264, 206273, 2291601, B65D 8510, B65D 8512, B65D 4316

Patent

active

061644447

DESCRIPTION:

BRIEF SUMMARY
BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION

This invention relates to packaging for smoking articles such as cigarettes, cigars and cigarillos. For convenience and brevity these will be referred to herein as cigarettes.
The object of the present invention is to provide packaging for cigarettes which acts as an effective barrier against ingress and egress of humidity or ingress of contaminants during transport and storage of the packaged cigarettes, but which also allows maintenance of that effective barrier property even after the package has been first opened by the user. In other words, we are providing a resealable barrier layer in cigarette packaging.
The provision of barrier layers either as an inner wrap of a cigarette carton or an outer wrap or both is commonplace. Provision is more or less essential if cigarettes are to have any sort of commercial shelf life in zones having hostile climatic conditions, especially in high temperature, high humidity zones.
But as far as we are aware all such barrier layers so far provided, whether internal or external, have been destroyed in their barrier function when the user first opens the package. Typically, an outer barrier layer has a tearstrip which the user operates to separate halves of the outer wrap which is then discarded, or a barrier layer within a cigarette carton (or surrounding a soft wrap package) although not usually discarded once the package is opened has a permanent opening formed in it by the user when he first gains access.
U.S. Pat. No. 4,763,779 shows a tin-foil inner wrapping for a Laube-type box where a flap of that wrapping may be brought down over an access aperture, and overlap the edges of the aperture. It may have a "peel-seal" connection to the edges it overlaps.


SUMMARY OF THE INVENTION

In the present invention we provide a resealable sealed barrier layer by defining in the barrier layer an access aperture extending from an end wall into a major face of a cuboid pack, there being over the aperture and extending beyond all of its openable edges a cover layer having a permanently tacky surface engageable with the barrier material adjacent to the edges of the aperture. The cover layer will usually be a discrete layer applied to the barrier layer.
The aperture may be defined by lines of weakening in the unopened package, not penetrating through the thickness of the material, or by actual cuts, with or without interruptions. The aperture in the barrier layer will preferably be defined by the line or lines of weakening or cuts and by an unweakened or uncut edge, this forming a hinged flap of the barrier material.
The cover layer with a permanently tacky surface may itself be formed of barrier material, even if discrete from the main body of such material, but it may be quite satisfactory to use for that purpose a paper or other sheet material which preferably will be continuous from edge to edge, that is to say, across the whole extent of the aperture in the barrier layer plus its overlapping edges.
The layer may be in the form of a label, a coupon or an excise stamp, for example.
The preferred material of the barrier layer will either be a plastics/metal foil laminate or a metallized plastics material since either of these offer outstandingly good barrier properties.
The barrier layer be continuous over one minor end of the pack or charge, and have side seams along both minor sides of the pack and an envelope or similar fold over the opposite minor end. The barrier layer need not be applied in that manner--it can equally well be applied so as to be continuous over one minor side and sealed over both minor ends and one minor side.
Various patterns of heat sealable portions of barrier layer, achieved by the application of glue, lacquer or the like to the barrier material, can when heat-sealed with each other or with the barrier material form an enclosure which is as near as possible hermetic.
It is desirable that a non-adhesive tab is present at one edge of the cover layer, to aid opening and reopening of the pack.
It is preferable that the tab does

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