Blue is the colour food factories use for things that shouldn't be in the food. Blue plasters, blue cloths, blue pens. A blue vacuum pouch borrows the same logic: it's a pack you can tell apart from across the room. That's the whole product, and for some businesses it's worth 1.4p a bag more than clear.
What businesses use it for
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Raw from cooked. A cooked-meat room and a raw-meat room in the same chiller, with blue for one of them, so a pack in the wrong place is spotted before it's opened.
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Poultry from red meat. Butchers and small processors who want a visual barrier between chicken and everything else.
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Frozen stock from fresh. Product that's been frozen and thawed can't be refrozen or sold as fresh. Packing it blue at the freezer door removes the guesswork weeks later.
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Allergen or specialist lines. A halal line, a gluten-free line, a product for one customer. Anything where a mixed-up pack is a recall, not an inconvenience.
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Customer-specific supply. A wholesaler packing for two supermarkets where one wants its product identifiable on the dock.
The range
Blue comes in three large sizes, because colour coding is mostly done at primal and bulk-pack stage rather than on a 200g retail pack.
Same 65 micron PA/PE film as the clear pouches, same seal, same oxygen barrier. The tint is translucent, so you can still see what's inside and check the seal line. Chamber machines only, as with everything we sell.
When clear is the better buy
If nobody in your business would ever confuse two packs, blue is a cost with no return. A single-species butcher packing joints for the counter should stay with clear 300×400mm at 5.4p. Blue earns its place when the chiller holds more than one category of product and the packs look alike from the outside. The moment a colleague picks up the wrong pack, it's paid for the year.
Writing it into the system
Colour coding only works if everyone knows the code. Put it on the wall in the packing room and in the HACCP file: "Blue pouch = raw poultry" or "Blue pouch = previously frozen". One meaning per colour. If you later need a second distinction, use a label colour rather than trying to remember which blue means what. The food safety guide covers where vacuum packing sits in the plan.
Other colours
Blue is what we stock. Other tints and printed pouches are made to order, which is the route if you need a two-colour system or want a customer's brand in the film. Email orders@flexipol.co.uk with the sizes and monthly volume.
Try it on your line. Add a blue pouch to a free sample pack and see whether the colour reads from where your team stands.
