Sustainable packaging solution

In order to meet the demand from the mar­ket for alter­na­tive pack­ag­ing mate­ri­als, the two com­pa­nies Leipa Georg Lein­felder and Koehler Paper Group have devel­oped in con­junc­tion with Mul­ti­vac a card­board com­pos­ite, which can be used for pack­ing fresh food such as meat for exam­ple. This inno­v­a­tive solu­tion based on paper fibre pack­ag­ing mate­r­i­al was pre­sent­ed at IFFA on the Mul­ti­vac­stand and run on a com­pact ther­mo­form­ing pack­ag­ing machine. The packs are designed in such a way, that the end user is able to sep­a­rate the card­board back­ing from the plas­tic bar­ri­er lay­er and then put it into the paper recycling.

Multilayer composite for skin packs

When devel­op­ing this mate­r­i­al, the chal­lenge was to pro­duce a card­board com­pos­ite with high bar­ri­er prop­er­ties and a suit­able seal­ing medi­um, which has the stiff­ness of a flat pre-cut card sheet but is also capa­ble of being wound onto a roll, so that it can be run on a ther­mo­form­ing pack­ag­ing machine. The first results show that the Leipaflat mul­ti­lay­er com­pos­ite is excel­lent at meet­ing all the require­ments. This mate­r­i­al can be used on a ther­mo­form­ing pack­ag­ing machine to pro­duce skin packs, which not only pack­age the prod­uct secure­ly but also present it attrac­tive­ly to the con­sumer. As a strate­gic devel­op­ment part­ner in the board sec­tor, Koehler pro­vides Leipa with the mate­r­i­al for man­u­fac­tur­ing Leipaflat.

“Leipaflat is made of up to 90 per­cent renew­able raw mate­ri­als. Com­pared to the con­ven­tion­al packs used for these prod­ucts, the fea­tures of this pack­ag­ing mate­r­i­al are its appear­ance and feel of a paper pack, and this con­tributes sig­nif­i­cant­ly to prod­uct dif­fer­en­ti­a­tion in the chill cab­i­net,” explains Matthias Haux, Com­mer­cial Head of Flex­i­ble Pack­ag­ing at Leipa. “This solu­tion meets the high aspi­ra­tions and demands of con­sumers, who are con­scious of both qual­i­ty and the envi­ron­ment. The card­board offers not just the required stiff­ness, but it can also be run par­tic­u­lar­ly well on ther­mo­form­ing pack­ag­ing machines thanks to its ease of wind­ing on rolls. This solu­tion can gen­er­al­ly also be used on exist­ing machines and dies. If request­ed, we are always will­ing to give cus­tomers advice on site about the opti­mum set­tings for their equipment.”

Dan­ny Köp­pl, Prod­uct Man­ag­er for Films & Con­sum­ables at Mul­ti­vac, adds: “This sus­tain­able pack­ag­ing solu­tion, which was launched at Fach­Pack 2018 and mar­ket­ed under the Mul­ti­vac Paper­Board range, has already received a very pos­i­tive recep­tion from pro­fes­sion­als in the trade. Now we are receiv­ing a large num­ber of enquiries from the mar­ket, par­tic­u­lar­ly against the back­ground of the EU Plas­tics Strat­e­gy, and these are com­ing not only from Ger­many and West­ern Europe but also from many oth­er regions such as East­ern Europe, North Amer­i­ca and Ocea­nia. We are cur­rent­ly car­ry­ing out a large num­ber of sam­ple pro­duc­tions for a wide range of customers.”

“We see great poten­tial for this project, which has begun very suc­cess­ful­ly, and we are con­vinced that we can address the future of pack­ag­ing in con­junc­tion with our high­ly qual­i­fied part­ners, who embody the same col­lab­o­ra­tive ideas as we do,” says Dr. Markus Wild­berg­er, Cor­po­rate Direc­tor of Tech­nol­o­gy at Koehler. “As part of our own ideas on sus­tain­abil­i­ty, this project sup­ports our aims of replac­ing plas­tics in pack­ag­ing with paper-based mate­ri­als, where it is sen­si­ble and prac­ti­cal to do so. This means that a prod­uct made from renew­able raw mate­ri­als is used, one for which closed-loop recy­cling has already been devel­oped. We see in this and oth­er col­lab­o­ra­tive projects the oppor­tu­ni­ty to devel­op and mar­ket fur­ther inno­v­a­tive solu­tions in the sec­tor of flex­i­ble and rigid board pack­ag­ing.” Dr. Wild­berg­er also empha­sizes that this could involve devel­op­ments in the non-food as well as food sector.

“Based on today’s knowl­edge of the planned har­mon­i­sa­tion of the EU reg­u­la­tions on plas­tic dis­pos­al, we assume that Leipaflat will lead to sig­nif­i­cant cost ben­e­fits in the con­text of the pack­ag­ing fee for com­pa­nies,” says Matthias Haux from Leipa. “And last but not least, the envi­ron­ment as well as con­sumers also ben­e­fit from this solution.”

PaperBoard

The Paper­Board port­fo­lio com­pris­es a wide range of solu­tions for pro­duc­ing MAP and vac­u­um skin packs from paper fibre-based mate­ri­als. In con­junc­tion with lead­ing man­u­fac­tur­ers, the com­pa­ny has devel­oped suit­able pack­ag­ing mate­ri­als, which can be run on stan­dard machines. By using dif­fer­ent func­tion­al lay­ers, it is pos­si­ble to pro­duce packs from paper fibre-based mate­ri­als, which also meet the bar­ri­er require­ments of the most sen­si­tive prod­ucts. The packs can be designed in such a way, that the end user is able to sep­a­rate the card­board back­ing from the plas­tic bar­ri­er lay­er and then put it into the paper recycling.