Paper-based packaging materials are becoming an increasingly popular as food producers – including leading FMCG brands - have set ambitious targets to reduce the use of plastics in food packaging and embrace more eco-friendly materials.

Packle is a leading producer of eco-friendly and entirely paper-based materials that can be suitable for both indirect and food packaging applications. We typically work with end-users to perfect and optimize our products specifically for their requirements: what we produce for butter wrap needs to be different for chocolate wrap, ice cream cone or stock cube wrappers, for example. 

In addition to being paper-based, our portfolio of products is what we call ‘mono-materialistic.’ Mono-materials are important in the future of more sustainable food packaging in the sense that they don’t cause contamination issues when mixed with paperboards (a mix of paper-based finishes and plastics in food packaging can cause issues with recycling, despite the fact that both paper and plastics are typically easily recyclable as stand-alone materials).

All in all, the food industry is experiencing a period of extreme change when it comes to food packaging. Consumers are increasingly looking to their favorite brands to present more eco-friendly alternatives to traditional packaging materials, but for brands it’s not so straightforward: testing the capabilities of new materials for food packaging - even sustainable ones - is a complex and time-consuming process.

While Packle works tirelessly to ensure that our products meet the technical characteristics required for the end application, it’s also part of our job to ensure that our products meet the requirements of the partners of our customers and their established supply chains: there’s no point in having a perfect product for food packaging, if it isn’t machinable or gives printers or converters optimal performance either. We therefore see our role as multidimensional, providing optimal products for brands and their supply chains, rather than focusing on one party at the cost of forgetting about the others. 

Our global team of scientists, researchers and developers spend a lot of time testing, refining and optimizing our products: both from the perspective of the performance of our product in it’s capacity as a direct food contact material, or in the context of it’s visual appeal, given our papers can be used for both performance and appeal reasons.   

The future: will we see more paper-based packaging for direct food contact?

For many multinational food companies, making a switch to paper-based food packaging is the next logical step in their meeting their sustainability goals and reducing the amount of single-use plastics used in their packaging. Easily recycled across much of the world, paper presents an eco-friendly material that also offers surprising technical benefits and features that give many benefits, and we therefore expect to see significant uptake in paper-based packaging materials going forward.