BASF, StePac partner to develop sustainable produce packaging
BASF, StePac partner to develop sustainable produce packaging
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BASF SE, Ludwigshafen, Germany, and StePac, Tefen, Israel, are partnering to create new sustainable packaging specifically for the fresh produce sector.
BASF says it will supply StePac with its Ultramid Ccycled product, a chemically recycled polyamide 6 that will provide StePac with greater flexibility to advance contact-sensitive packaging formats to a higher sustainable standard within the circular economy.
StePac, which specializes in developing packaging, says it is pioneering the use of chemically recycled plastics for the packaging of fresh perishables and was recently certified to incorporate chemically recycled polyamide 6 into its flexible, modified atmosphere packaging (MAP) products. The company’s two brands, Xgo and Xtend, are based on MAP technology with built-in humidity control that slows respiration inside the packaging, delays the aging process, inhibits microbial decay and preserves the quality and nutritional value of produce during prolonged storage and long-haul shipments.
The companies say Ultramid Ccycled will make up 30 percent of the packaging material, with options for integration at a higher percentage.
“This alliance will help strike a balance between creating plastic packaging that is as eco-friendly as possible to keep fresh produce longer through more prudent use of lean plastic films,” StePac Business Development Manager Gary Ward says. “These upgraded packaging formats will continue to maintain their role of significantly reducing food waste, a most important task considering that global food waste is responsible for about 8 percent of anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions.”
BASF says its chemical recycling process, called ChemCycling, has broken new ground in the recycling of plastic materials. It adds that chemical recycling primarily involves plastic materials that would have been used for energy recovery or landfilled and complements mechanical recycling by yielding food-grade recycled plastic.
“In a thermochemical process, our partners obtain recycled feedstock from these end-of-life plastics, which is then fed into the BASF Verbund,” says Dr. Dominik Winter, vice president of BASF’s European polyamides business. “Using a mass balance approach, the raw material can be attributed to specific products, such as Ultramid Ccycled. This helps to replace fossil raw materials and is an important step towards circularity. As chemically recycled plastics have the same quality and safety as virgin material, the scope of plastics that can be recycled for fresh produce packaging is widened.”
StePac says Colombian passion fruit exporters Jardin Exotics S.A.S. will be the first to use the new packaging brand Xgo Circular, which is supplied as film for horizontal form fill-and-seal. The company says the packaging’s MAP properties will slow the ripening process and preserve the quality of the fruit during its long sea voyage from Colombia to Europe.
StePac adds that packing at-source in the final retail packaging format also eliminates the need for repacking after arrival. For passion fruit, the company says the combination of the produce-specific modified atmosphere properties of the film and its high-water vapor transmission rate is what makes film unique in its performance.
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Source: Recycling Today
BASF, StePac partner to develop sustainable produce packaging
<![CDATA[BASF SE, Ludwigshafen, Germany, and StePac, Tefen, Israel, are partnering to create new sustainable packaging specifically for the fresh produce sector.BASF says it will supply StePac with its Ultramid Ccycled product, a chemically recycled polyamide 6 that will provide StePac with greater flexibility to advance contact-sensitive packaging formats to a higher sustainable standard within the circular economy.StePac, which specializes in developing packaging, says it is pioneering the use of chemically recycled plastics for the packaging of fresh perishables and was recently certified to incorporate chemically recycled polyamide 6 into its flexible, modified atmosphere packaging (MAP) products. The company’s two brands, Xgo and Xtend, are based on MAP technology with built-in humidity control that slows respiration inside the packaging, delays the aging process, inhibits microbial decay and preserves the quality and nutritional value of produce during prolonged storage and long-haul shipments.The companies say Ultramid Ccycled will make up 30 percent of the packaging material, with options for integration at a higher percentage.“This alliance will help strike a balance between creating plastic packaging that is as eco-friendly as possible to keep fresh produce longer through more prudent use of lean plastic films,” StePac Business Development Manager Gary Ward says. “These upgraded packaging…