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Professional Custom Stickers Printing Manufacturer Since 2005
Struggling with lifting or peeling labels in cold storage? Read our 2026 guide on choosing freezer-grade adhesives and materials for frozen food packaging.
The Science Behind Frozen Food Labels
Food safety is a global concern.We have made strict food safety laws in China and other countries.Because frozen foods are stored for a long time, they are easy to get contaminated by bacteria.Consequently, they must clear more stringent food safety testing and inspection rules.
This is where frozen food labels come into play—they are vital tools to track food safety and transparently display essential product information. In China, this process is governed by definitive legal standards, including the" Measures for the Supervision and Administration of Food Labeling and the National Food Safety Standard" - "General Principles for Prepackaged Food Labeling (GB 7718-2025)".
To survive the harsh conditions of cold chain logistics, these specialized cold chain labels are engineered to prevent moisture damage, ensuring that high-quality printing remains clear, legible, and compliant with all industry standards over time.
The answer is that it is strongly not recommended to use coated paper as label surface material because the paper has poor physical toughness.
Once we put paper labels into a low-temperature storage or cold chain transportation environment.
They quickly become hard and brittle in low temperatures. Slight pulling can easily make them crack or break.
In addition, in a high-humidity environment, it will quickly absorb moisture from the air and condense on the surface.
This will not only cause large areas of printed text on the surface to be blurred and colors to fade.
This will directly lead to scanning errors on product barcodes and traceability QR codes, making these codes difficult to identify.
After long-term exposure to moisture, the labels will turn soft, wrinkled, bulged and curled.
They can no longer maintain stable adhesion on all kinds of frozen food packaging surfaces.
These problems will directly cause the loss of key core food safety information and difficulty in identification.
It neither meets the standards for the compliance of prepackaged frozen food labels, but also seriously affects the traceability of product circulation.
According to the Nutrition Labeling and Education Act of 1990, NLEA and Title 21 CFR, information transparency must be ensured, misleading must be avoided, and consumers’ right to know must be protected.
The surface material directly determines the durability of the label. Choose a special material that is resistant to low temperature, condensation water, and grease.
Specific choices are shown in the table below:
Label Material Type | Core Characteristics | Applicable Scenarios |
| PP Synthetic Paper (polypropylene synthetic paper) | Cost-effective; Low-temperature resistance up to -40℃; Not easy to embrittle or crack after repeated freezing and thawing; After surface coating/lamination treatment, it has excellent water resistance, moisture resistance and oil resistance | Most frozen foods (quick-frozen rice and noodles, frozen meat, ordinary seafood, frozen vegetables, etc.); Suitable for most packaging materials and automatic labeling lines, applicable to domestic and export general scenarios. |
| PET Film (polyester film) | Optimal durability; Excellent tensile resistance, tear resistance and scratch resistance; Maintains good flexibility at -20℃; Smooth surface, suitable for high-precision printing | Frozen foods stored in cold storage for a long time, high-end frozen foods (imported steak, premium seafood) and frozen meat exported to the EU; Suitable for rigid packaging and high-speed automatic labeling lines. |
| PE Film (polyethylene film) | Strong adhesion; Soft and elastic texture; Can closely fit uneven/soft packaging, and will not crack with the shrinkage and deformation of the packaging; Good low-temperature resistance, slightly inferior tear resistance. | Soft-packaged frozen foods (frozen dumpling bags, frozen snack bags, vacuum-packaged frozen meat); Suitable for physical deformation of soft packaging and automatic flexible labeling, avoiding use in scenarios with frequent logistics handling. |
Based on this, the type of glue decides how well labels stick, adapt to environments and meet safety rules.
You put the label to the package at room temperature and then send it to be frozen. Or you put the label directly on the frozen package.
You may not have noticed that many labels have minimum labeling temperatures and usage temperatures.
When you attach labels, strictly control the ambient temperature and humidity.
Label at approximately 20℃, maintaining the relative humidity between 40% and 60%.
We also need to focus on the glue curing process. Usually, it takes more than 24 hours for the glue to fully solidify.
Avoid freezing the glue before it solidifies, causing the label to peel off. Adhesives on self-adhesive labels turn hard and brittle in low temperatures.
Moisture or frost on package surfaces also makes labeling much harder. When you stick labels on frozen food plastic bags and then move them to normal surroundings, big temperature differences make the packages to expand and shrink.
This change can easily cause the labels to curl and come loose.
Choosing low-temperature-resistant glue can effectively avoid this situation.
The following will explain to you how to choose high-quality glue.
It stays soft and sticky at -20℃ or even lower temperatures. It will not turn brittle or lose adhesion. It keeps labels firmly attached during cold storage and fits well with low-temperature storage for frozen food.
It can stick tightly quickly even if there is slight condensation on packaging surfaces. You do not need to wait until packages are totally dry. It works well in damp labeling environments and prevents labels from falling off due to weak sticking.
It can stand temperature changes during transportation, storage and sales of frozen food. It still keeps stable stickiness after repeated freezing and thawing without edge curling or falling off. It also fits common glue curing processes and dries fast under different temperature and humidity to ensure good sticking performance.
Important reminder
Do not use ordinary normal-temperature glue with low-temperature resistant label materials just to cut costs. Mismatched glue and materials will still cause labels to fall off easily.
With well-equipped testing equipment and strong technical force, we have several inward rotogravure printing machines and fully automatic label printing machines.
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