Packaging with renewable plastics

Chem­i­cal indus­try com­pa­ny SABIC today announced that Ork­la, Nordic brand own­er in busi­ness-to-con­sumer (B2C) com­merce with foods, snacks, food care for sport and food ingre­di­ents, has launched its first chips pack­ag­ing using renew­able polypropy­lene (PP) poly­mer from SABIC’s TRUCIRCLE^™ port­fo­lio. The sus­tain­able mate­r­i­al is derived from tall oil, a resid­ual prod­uct from the Nordic forestry indus­try, and is con­vert­ed into a Biax­i­al­ly Ori­ent­ed PolyPropy­lene (BOPP) by IRPLAST, an Ital­ian ver­ti­cal­ly inte­grat­ed man­u­fac­tur­er of spe­cial­ty S‑BOPP films and con­vert­er of print­ed shrink­able BOPP roll-fed labels and PSA tapes. In Orkla’s chips bags, the mate­r­i­al solu­tion helps low­er the car­bon foot­print of the three part­ners’ val­ue chain in half com­pared to the use of tra­di­tion­al non-renew­able plastics.
“We want to make it eas­i­er for con­sumers to make envi­ron­men­tal­ly con­scious choic­es,” says Sara Malm­ström, Sus­tain­abil­i­ty Man­ag­er at Ork­la Con­fec­tionery & Snacks. “Pack­ag­ing is an impor­tant part of all our prod­ucts, and plas­tic pack­ag­ing in par­tic­u­lar can have a con­sid­er­able impact on both the envi­ron­ment and cli­mate. We are proud to be first in the Swedish mar­ket to put chips in bags made with plas­tics based on bio-renew­able feed­stock on the snack shelf,” she adds.
Ork­la had been look­ing for an inno­v­a­tive and agile con­vert­er capa­ble of meet­ing its sus­tain­abil­i­ty tar­gets and sup­ply­ing a renew­able film that would help them enhance the sus­tain­abil­i­ty pro­file of their pack­ag­ing. They iden­ti­fied IRPLAST, with whom SABIC had already been suc­cess­ful­ly col­lab­o­rat­ing in var­i­ous projects for the devel­op­ment of film prod­ucts in com­pli­ance with EU Pack­ag­ing and Waste Pack­ag­ing Direc­tives. Next to Nat­ur­al Ori­ent­ed PolyPropy­lene (NOPP) films from cer­ti­fied renew­able PP poly­mer, IRPLAST also offers an S‑BOPP (Simul­ta­ne­ous­ly ori­ent­ed BOPP) film range brand­ed as LOOPP. The NOPP and LOOPP prod­ucts both have received inde­pen­dent third par­ty Inter­na­tion­al Sus­tain­abil­i­ty and Car­bon Cer­ti­fi­ca­tion (ISCC PLUS).
Nao­mi Lunadei, Sus­tain­abil­i­ty Man­ag­er at IRPLAST, explains: “We firm­ly believe that sus­tain­able growth must become a pri­or­i­ty for busi­ness­es pro­duc­ing and con­vert­ing plas­tic pack­ag­ing mate­ri­als. As a pack­ag­ing pro­duc­er, we are well aware of our respon­si­bil­i­ties in mak­ing the 2030 Sus­tain­able Devel­op­ment Goals a real­i­ty, and we are very com­mit­ted to the chal­lenge. Our two new lines demon­strate the deter­mined route we have embarked on with our part­ner. While our NOPP prod­ucts help reduce the car­bon foot­print of flex­i­ble pack­ag­ing, the LOOPP range opens a door for cus­tomers to enter the cir­cu­lar plas­tics econ­o­my which is being pro­gres­sive­ly man­dat­ed by leg­is­la­tors worldwide.”
In con­trast to com­pa­ra­ble BOPP film from tra­di­tion­al fos­sil fuel, every kilo­gram of renew­able NOPP pack­ag­ing takes more than 2 kg of CO₂ emis­sions out of the envi­ron­ment. The first set of new Ork­la pack­ages in NOPP flex­i­ble film includes 275-gram bags of Grill, Sour Cream & Onion, Dill & Chive and Salt­ed Chips, and promi­nent­ly dis­plays the 50 per­cent CO₂ reduc­tion to con­sumers. Ork­la Con­fec­tionery & Snacks Swe­den has an ambi­tion to grad­u­al­ly intro­duce sim­i­lar bags for all their snacks packages.
“We are proud of  imple­ment­ing our cer­ti­fied renew­able PP poly­mer in a flex­i­ble pack­ag­ing,” states Mark Vester, Cir­cu­lar Econ­o­my Leader at SABIC. “The mate­ri­als offer drop-in solu­tions for replac­ing fos­sil-based plas­tics in the pack­ag­ing indus­try with no com­pro­mise on food safe­ty. With our cer­ti­fied cir­cu­lar and renew­able poly­mers, we are aim­ing to cre­ate a sus­tain­able val­ue chain where we col­lab­o­rate with down­stream cus­tomers like IRPLAST and Ork­la in the use of ani­mal-free bio-based feed­stock or in the reuse of post-con­sumer recy­cle, there­by seek­ing to cap­ture the great­est val­ue from sources that have tra­di­tion­al­ly been ignored or discarded.”
SABIC’s offer­ing spans from design for recy­cla­bil­i­ty ser­vices and mechan­i­cal­ly recy­cled mate­ri­als to cer­ti­fied cir­cu­lar prod­ucts from chem­i­cal recy­cling of used plas­tics and cer­ti­fied renew­able poly­mers from bio-based feed­stock. The com­pa­ny’s poly­mers are based on a mass bal­ance approach. This wide­ly rec­og­nized inter­na­tion­al sus­tain­abil­i­ty cer­ti­fi­ca­tion scheme ver­i­fies that the mass bal­ance account­ing fol­lows pre­de­fined and trans­par­ent rules. In addi­tion, it pro­vides trace­abil­i­ty along the sup­ply chain, from the feed­stock to the final product.