Application News Organic
Application News Organic tea packaging Award winning headphones Innovia Films has announced that Carrington Tea (Closter, New Jersey, USA) is using biobased and home as well as industrial compostable NatureFlex packaging films for their Carrington Organics Tea line. High barriers to oxygen and moisture ensure product freshness. AudioQuest NightHawk headphones with earcups made of “Liquid Wood” – ARBOFORM ® from TECNARO GmbH; source: AudioQuest The teas are packaged in a 20-bag retailready “soft pack”, developed in conjunction with Fastik Label and Supply. This packaging format is commonly used in Europe for economy-sized packaging, however this is rarely seen in North America. “For our organic tea we felt that a compostable package would complement our product and speak to people who want to make a positive impact on the environment. Flexible material also offered us a unique packaging approach and a chance for differentiation, as tea bags are predominantly packed in a box or can. Functionally, NatureFlex delivers the freshness barrier that our teas require along with excellent receptivity to inks, communicating our branding through vibrant print,” explained Debbie Shandel, Executive Vice President and Chief Marketing Officer at Carrington Co., LLC. Chris Mitchell, Business Manager, Packaging- Americas, Innovia Films enthused, “It’s fantastic that we have another satisfied customer using our compostable NatureFlex packaging film for their products.” The new Carrington Organics Tea line is offered in three great flavors including two herbals – Chamomile and Soothing Herbal, as well as the very popular Green Tea Lemon. The Carrington Organics Tea contains 20 tea bags per package and is available for purchase at select grocery stores and online. All Carrington Organics Tea products are organic-certified and packed in the United States. MT www.natureflex.com www.carringtontea.com Best known for its high-performance audio/video cables, AudioQuest (Irvine, California, USA) officially introduced its first set of headphones at this year’s Consumer Electronics Show (6 – 9 Jan) in Las Vegas. Named 2015 CES Innovation Honoree (Headphones) and Best of Innovation Winner (Eco-Design and Sustainable Technologies), NightHawk is an around-the-ear semi-open headphone designed and engineered by Skylar Gray. In creating NightHawk, Gray worked to bring purposeful and intelligent innovation to the mature art of headphone design. As such, NightHawk exhibits many groundbreaking components, including sophisticated earcups developed in collaboration with the German firm TECNARO, using ARBOFORM ® , or Liquid Wood. According to Gray, “Arboform is a key element to NightHawk’s performance and a driving force in the excitement surrounding its release.” Liquid Wood is made from 100 % renewable raw materials. Its principal component is lignin — a byproduct in the cellulose pulping and papermaking process — whose annual production exceeds 50 million tonnes. Whereas the production (and disposal) of plastic is known to present environmental hazards, the production of Arboform has minimal impact on the ecosystem. Lignin is combined with natural fibers, natural resins and waxes, and treated in such a way that it can be injection moulded. While injection moulding is commonly accomplished with plastics or synthetic polymers, Liquid Wood is a natural material; thus, every NightHawk earcup is one of a kind, exhibiting subtle variations in colour, pattern, and surface finish that further enhance NightHawk’s overall beauty. Moreover, compared to ordinary plastic or wood, Liquid Wood has far superior acoustic properties and provides a seemingly endless array of geometric possibilities. In NightHawk, Liquid Wood is used to shape the earcups to more closely resemble the human ear, thereby providing a more complete and comfortable fit, reducing stress on the listener’s head and ears. Gray: “AudioQuest looks forward to incorporating Arboform in many more products, as we strive to achieve high performance, outstanding value, and natural beauty through responsible, sustainable engineering.” KL www.nighthawk.audioquest.com www.tecnaro.de 40 bioplastics MAGAZINE [02/15] Vol. 10
Application News Seaweed chips bags Corrugated tubing New Frontier Foods, a San Francisco area-based company is now using Innovia’s biobased NatureFlex packaging for their Ocean’s Halo line of flavored snack chips made from natural, sustainably harvested, and nutrient-rich seaweed. This flexible packaging material offers excellent barriers to oxygen and moisture, and is certified compostable. When looking at packaging options, Ocean’s Halo felt that the pack should reflect their core values while also providing superior protection for their product. In order to maintain the crunch of the chips it was critical to guard against moisture vapour ingress. A high barrier to oxygen was also necessary to extend shelf life. Furthermore, the packaging needed to match the Ocean’s Halo brand identity. Ocean’s Halo Seaweed Chips is the first product from New Frontier Foods, Inc. The company was started in Burlingame, California by four dads. The founders of Ocean’s Halo Seaweed Chips are on a mission to create a chip nutritious enough for the produce aisle, but delicious enough for the snack aisle. Made from only sustainably grown seaweed and other natural ingredients, Ocean’s Halo Seaweed Chips are organic and available in five gluten-free flavours – Chili Lime, Sea Salt, Korean BBQ, Hot & Spicy, and Texas BBQ. The chips are packed with vitamins and minerals, are GM-Free and contain no trans fats, MSGs or artificial ingredients. Robert Mock, co-founder of Ocean’s Halo stated, “We were introduced to the Innovia Films’ compostable packaging alternative, NatureFlex, by Genpak, a leading food packing company with manufacturing locations in both the US and Canada. Over the past two years, we have built a great partnership with Genpak to bring our products to market with not only high quality material, but also with a like-minded approach to the environment.” Mike Shim another co-founder of Ocean’s Halo added, “When we were faced with packaging choices, we were 100 % committed to choosing compostable bags because it’s the right thing to do. Health and sustainability is one of our pledges to our customers and compostable bags are an integral part of that pledge.” Bill Reilly, the Development Manager with Genpak, added “Our challenge was to develop a structure that provides excellent barrier properties and works well on the packaging equipment. Oceans Halo, Innovia and Genpak worked together closely to develop this functional and completely compostable structure.” Christopher Tom, a Sales Executive with Innovia Films, was involved in the project. “We are proud to work with forward-thinking brands and packaging converters and help them reach their collective sustainability objectives.” MT Green corrugated cable protection tubing from REIKU (Wiehl, Germany) cannot not be recognized by its colour. Like its counterparts made of oilbased materials, the biobased version is black or gray. Its big advantages become evident in robot operation with a continuous series of bending cycles, where the products have a significantly longer service life. One of the first users is b+m surface systems, a leading supplier of fully automated painting plants and paint application systems for surfaces with very high quality standards. The company uses the resource-conserving completely biobased PA 11corrugated tubing from Reiku as standard for its latest painting robot generation, Type T1 X5. Under a continuous series of bending cycles, which is typical for many industrial robots, this product has the highest service life of all corrugated cable protection tubing in this manufacturer’s extensive portfolio. Says Sales Manager Peter Sailer: “In internal trials, corrugated bio-based tubing with a nominal diameter of 70 mm remained free of damage even after 16 million cycles in the flexibility test, which corresponds in practice to a service life of around three years. With the development of this corrugated tubing product, Reiku has demonstrated that top- performance cable protection is ensured, also in view of dwindling oil reserves.” The outstanding behavior of this tubing under dynamic stress is down to the special properties of the material used to produce it: Reiku’s corrugated cable protection tubing, which is available in nominal widths of 12 – 70 mm, is made of halogen-free flame-retardant polyamide 11 (PA11). This bio-based engineering plastic combines excellent mechanical properties under static and dynamic load with high temperature and chemical resistance. It is also abrasionresistant. MT www.reiku.de www.natureflex.com www.oceanshalo.com bioplastics MAGAZINE [02/15] Vol. 10 41
