Application News Clear
Application News Clear packaging from Bio-PET 30 The company Seufert Transparente Verpackungen (Rodgau, Germany) can now offer a new material: Bio- PET. It allows producing resource-saving transparent packaging at nearly the same costs as traditional clear packaging. Seufert is working with Bio-PET film, which is partly manufactured from renewable resources. I.e. the 30 % by wt MEG (monoethylene glycol) is produced from sugar cane, while the 70 % by wt. terephthalic acid (PTA) are still made from petroleum. However, worldwide research into finding a plant based alternative for the PTA content is still ongoing. Bio-PET may be transformed into clear folding boxes, transparent sleeves and die cuts in the same way as standard PET. The benefits are clear. Thanks to using more renewable resources, less raw material derived from petroleum is needed. This is a subject consumers are attaching more and more importance to and which allows differentiation. Using Bio-PET, brand owners may emphasis their position and attract attention to their products. For Seufert comparable “plant based materials, such as PLA, had one big drawback – price,“ as managing director Thomas Pfaff explains: “our packaging from Bio-PET is now available at nearly the same price as transparent packaging from traditional PET”. Until the end of the year, the German company has a special offer for those, who would like to try Bio-PET: CO 2 emissions resulting from manufacturing of packaging from Bio-PET will be compensated through the carbon neutral scheme from natureOffice. For a couple of years, Seufert has been offering their customers carbon neutral printing in cooperation with natureOffice. This service will be free of charge for all users of Bio-PET until end of 2016. Biobased PET is being transformed into transparent packaging solutions in the same way as the usual PET films: offset and screen printing, cutting, stamping and gluing are managed in house at Seufert’s. Another advantage – especially compared to other materials respecting the environment – is that Bio-PET can be recycled together with conventional PET. MT www.seufert.com New certified coffeecapsules Bonga Red Mountain: Wild coffee from Ethiopian rainforest project is now available in compostable coffee capsules / aluminum-free and biobased. The company Original Food from Freiburg, Germany, has worked on a solution concerning the challenges of conventional aluminium capsules and is now prepared to launch the first certified compostable coffee capsule for the Nespresso-system. The capsule is not only aluminum-free and biobased but also contains one of the best coffees in the world: Bonga Red Mountain wild coffee from the Ethiopian region of Kaffa. For over 12 years, Original Food has been marketing this premium wild coffee as active contribution to the preservation of the decimated rainforest and has been leading the way in sustainability. For this reason, it was only logical for the founder, Florian Hammerstein, to invest in the development of an environmental-compatible capsule. “Premium wild coffee, such as Bonga Red Mountain, which is not only collected in a rainforest project in Ethiopia but also traded fair and processed environmentally friendly does not belong into a regular plastic capsule” argues Florian Hammerstein, founder and CEO of Original Food. “Even so, it is our aim to share this unique taste with fans of capsule machines and that is precisely why we have been researching for an ideal solution: the compostable coffee capsule.” With the new Bonga Red Mountain coffee capsule Original Food advocates a capsule that avoids the growing wastage: the capsule consists of a specially developed PLA based bioplastic on the basis of renewable resources such as corn or sugar cane. For the lid a very compacted paper is used. In order to increase the aroma preservation, two capsules are packed in one compostable organic wrapping. Both the biodegradability of the entire capsule and the bioplastic wrapping are certified according to European standard DIN EN 13432. As evidence, the capsule is furthermore authorized to display the OK-compost sign as well as the Seedling by European Bioplastics. MT www.originalfood.de 18 bioplastics MAGAZINE [04/16] Vol. 11
Application News New PLA tamper-evident seal yields cost savings for customers New Hampshire (USA) - based eatSafe, LLC, a global leader in tamper-evident seals for the packaging industry, has developed and launched ecoSafe, a shrink film designed to save money on packaging costs while being environmentally friendly. ecoSafe is a biodegradable PLA shrink film manufactured from sustainable, 100 % annually renewable plant sugars to create a proprietary polylactide polymer. It caters to a growing number of companies who wish to package their products in more environmentally responsible manner. ecoSafe material is far superior environmentally to oil-based PET, polyethylene, PVC and polypropylene films, which use 20 – 250 % more non-renewable energy during production and produce 4 – 6 times more greenhouse gases during their life cycle. ecoSafe can be composted in industrial facilities, or incinerated with no volatile compounds (VOCs) and low residue created during burning. “Our customers tell us they are searching for more eco-friendly and greener-living packaging choices,” said Wayne Summerford, president of eatSafe. “ecoSafe fills that need, and works in traditionally more difficult applications like nested materials, shrink bundling, and multi-packing. We have had success not only with food manufacturers and contract packagers who are concerned about food safety, but also in the general packaging marketplace.” ecoSafe heat shrink film is roll stock and can be ordered in any width from 1 to 10 inches. It is designed to be utilized with the eatSafe Ringer, an automatic tamper-evident shrink banding machine. ecoSafe film is formed into a tamper-evident seal with an easy-open feature; no scissors are required and there are no sharp edges left after opening. A tamper-evident seal is required by the Food & Drug Administration on certain classes of products but is also widely used in the packaging industry due to its superior level of safety as compared to a simple tamper-resistant seal. ecoSafe’s customers report cost savings after making the switch from preform shrink bands to ecoSafe PLA roll stock applied with the eatSafe Ringer machine, says the company. Together, ecoSafe shrink film and the eatSafe Ringer machine replace the labor-intensive and costly existing technologies such as preform shrink bands, sleeves and safety stickers and labels. The savings are said to be primarily in labor, freight and inventory, but there is also a reduction in administrative and warehouse costs. “ecoSafe is much more environmentally-conscious than PET, PVC, polyethylene and polypropylene films,“ said Summerford. “In addition, ecoSafe’s biobased PLA material consumes far less non-renewable energy during production than any other type of shrink film currently on the market.” KL/MT www.eatsafepackaging.com PA 410 for automotive cooling systems Royal DSM, a global science-based company active in health, nutrition and materials, is extending its portfolio of high performance materials that answer the need in demanding automotive applications for hydrolysis resistance across a wide range of temperatures. The portfolio is targeted at numerous water-cooling related applications under the hood and includes a hydrolysis-resistant grade of its high performance bio-based polyamide, EcoPaXX. DSM’s extensive portfolio of materials based on bio-polyamides 410 (EcoPaXX ® ) are all inherently resistant to hydrolysis. One particular grade, EcoPaXX Q-HG6/7, is very well suited for applications such as expansion tanks that need to resist coolants at high temperatures. The lower density allows part weight to be cut by as much as 30 % compared with polyamide 66. A recentlydeveloped thin-walled “T” connector for a coolant hose in this grade has just been approved for use by a major German car manufacturer, and is scheduled to go into commercial production in the next few months. The connector needs to withstand high internal pressures at temperatures of up to 135 °C—something that is not possible with PA66. “EcoPaXX offers strength and reliability even in critical areas like the weld lines (areas where different flow fronts merge) in complex designs,” says Thomas Selberdinger, Sales Manager Automotive, at DSM. MT www.dsm.com bioplastics MAGAZINE [04/16] Vol. 11 19
