Why Test?
Colorants, flavorings, fragrances, and other additives are often sensitive to exposure to natural sunlight or indoor lighting. Because consumers are very perceptive of slight shifts in taste, color, or fragrance of their favorite goods, it is critical for manufacturers to ensure light stability of their products. At the same time, the additives used to protect against photodegradation are often very expensive, so care must be taken to avoid their overuse.
How long will your products resist color shifts due to sunlight? How long will they resist retail store lighting? Will light from any source change their flavor or smell? Has something changed in your process that might affect your product's light stability? Don't guess when you can test.
Q-Lab serves hundreds of customers in dozens of segments that relate to home and consumer goods, including:
- Food Grade Colorants
- Wine and Distilled Spirits
- Colored Sports Drinks
- Bottled Beverages
- Protective Packaging
- Retail Packaging
The QUV Accelerated Weathering Tester accurately simulates the short wave ultraviolet (UV) portion of the sunlight spectrum, which is responsible for severe photodegradation, leading to free radical attack on food and beverage colorants, flavorings, and fragrances. The QUV tester can provide significant acceleration compared to natural exposures, allowing a rapid test/reformulate/retest product development cycle. Its large specimen exposure area allows testing of full-size beverage bottles. The Q-SUN xenon test chamber adds the ability to expose materials to the full spectrum of sunlight, not just the short-wave UV. This can be important for very sensitive materials that degrade from exposure to longer wavelengths. The versatile flat-specimen tray in Q-SUN Xe-1 and Xe-3 testers allows for easy testing of products in a variety of bottles or containers.
Our Exposure Testing Services for Home and Consumer Goods
Florida & Arizona Natural Outdoor
While accelerated light stability chambers are a key weapon in the fight against the forces of sunlight, heat, and moisture, nothing beats the real thing: outdoor testing in one of Q-Lab's benchmark outdoor testing facilities. Q-Lab's South Florida and Arizona desert sites provide the ultimate test of your product's outdoor light stability using natural conditions. Since many food and beverage products are displayed outdoors in many places around the world, natural exposures in Florida and Arizona provide assurance that laboratory tests are realistic.
Accelerated Laboratory Testing
Accelerated laboratory lightfastness testing is an efficient and effective way to evaluate the durability performance of packaging colorants, and preservation of smell and taste for home and consumer goods. These tests can accelerate your lightfastness testing process and provide you with accurate and reliable answers.
Q-Lab's accelerated weathering testers simulate the primary light and temperature conditions that degrade all types of home and consumer goods, including:
- Color Change of Product
- Fading of Product
- Color Change of Packaging
- Fading of Packaging
- Flavor degradation
- Spoiling
Many test standards exist to ensure lightfastness and colorfastness of home and consumer goods, including the popular ICH Guidelines test for photostability. Visit Q-Lab’s Standards Search page to browse standards and find the right test for your product.