At PRS India 2025, held from 13 to 15 November at the Bombay Exhibition Centre, NESCO, Mumbai, UFlex showcased a suite of technologies aimed at making flexible packaging more recyclable and commercially viable. Speaking on the sidelines of the show, Ashish Saxena, joint president for packaging films and PET resin business at UFlex, outlined the company’s highlights and its broader view on recycling in India.
“The biggest highlight for us at PRS is our single pellet solution,” Saxena said. “We have integrated rPET into virgin PET to create a single pellet, which makes the use of recycled content completely seamless for customers and brands.”
Traditionally, processors have had to mix rPET and virgin PET separately, a process that demands additional capital investment and often results in inconsistencies.
“There are batch-to-batch variations in rPET, and manual mixing can lead to uneven quality,” he explained. “By offering a single pellet, those issues are addressed directly. It’s cost-efficient, capital-efficient, and most importantly, the product quality is extremely consistent.”
According to Saxena, the solution delivers superior transparency and strength, making it suitable for demanding packaging applications. Alongside this, UFlex is also displaying its range of PCR polyester films at the show.
“These are post-consumer recycled polyester films,” he said. “We continue to work on other solutions as well, and in the future we hope to introduce food-grade PP and PE films. But for this exhibition, the focus is on PCR polyester.”
Another major attraction at the UFlex stand is its multi-layer plastic (MLP) recycling machine, an area where the company has been active for over two decades. “UFlex has been a pioneer in this space. We’ve been working on flexible packaging recycling for more than 20 years,” Saxena noted.
He pointed out that while collection rates for rigid packaging in India are relatively strong, flexible packaging remains a challenge. “India has an inherent DNA of not wasting things, which is why rigid packaging collection works well,” he said. “But flexible packaging is difficult to collect and, until now, it hasn’t offered enough value to justify the effort.”
Saxena believes technologies that convert flexible packaging waste into usable materials can help change that equation. “If we can enhance the value of flexible packaging waste, collection will automatically improve,” he said. “But as a society, we also need to think about the people at the very bottom of the value chain.”
Referring to informal waste collectors, he added, “Think about the ragpicker. A wrapper weighs about one-fifth of a bottle, which means five times more effort to collect the same weight. If we want flexible packaging to be collected, it has to be worth their time.”
On the regulatory front, Saxena said the industry is steadily aligning itself with the government’s plastic packaging responsibility (PPR) framework. “Today, everyone understands what the PPR framework is and what their obligations are,” he said. “There is, however, an ongoing debate around recycled content in flexible packaging, mainly because flexible packs involve multiple polymers and food-grade recycled material is currently available only for polyester.”
In contrast, he said rigid plastics are already seeing strong progress. “In category one, the industry has done a great job. There is significant capacity on the supply side. Now brands—both multinational and domestic—need to do their part and absorb that recycled content.”
Explaining the MLP recycling machine on display, Saxena said it has been designed to handle almost any type of flexible packaging waste. “We maintain certain ratios of PE and PET to get the right melt flow index, but the core idea is simple—you can feed multi-material waste and still get a usable granule,” he said.
UFlex demonstrated end-use products made from this recycled material, including injection-moulded end caps used in its own packaging and a trolley bag. “The message is clear: this is not waste, it’s a resource,” Saxena said. “Even flexible packaging can be recycled into value-added, useful products.”
The machine, he added, is designed for decentralised use. “Flexible packaging waste is distributed, not concentrated like PET bottles. It doesn’t make sense to move it all to one central location,” he explained. “These machines operate at a smaller scale, so you can place them closer to where the waste is generated.”
Summing up UFlex’s approach, Saxena said the responsibility lies across the value chain. “We must continue to reduce usage, design for recyclability, and invest in technologies that bring waste back into the system. Only then can recycling truly work at scale.”
