Mondi & Hütthaler partner to create new fully recyclable plastic packaging

New recyclable mono-material thermoforming film

July 17, 2020

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Leading global packaging and paper group Mondi has partnered with Austrian meat producer Hütthaler to produce a fully recyclable thermoforming film from a mono-material for their meat and sausage products.

The film is made of a mono-material solution that can be fully recycled and provides a barrier to protect the food and extend its shelf life. The independent cyclos-HTP Institute for Recyclability and Product Responsibility has awarded this film the highest classification “AAA” for recyclability.

Recyclable mono-material film

Hütthaler’s requirement was to replace the previously used film with a recyclable solution. The company was looking for a more sustainable approach that would not compromise quality or the attractive presentation of the food.

Hütthaler approached Mondi to provide an alternative. Using its customer-centric EcoSolutions approach, Mondi was able to re-invent the packaging for Hütthaler by maintaining optimum functionality while replacing less sustainable packaging, reducing raw material usage, and designing packaging that was ready for recycling. Mondi completely manufactured the new packaging. In particular, the bottom film is supplied by Mondi’s Styria plant in Austria, which has also been awarded AA+ for food safety by the British Retail Consortium (BRCGS).

“We worked with Hütthaler to find a more sustainable approach that still meets the high food standards, preserves shelf life, and guarantees runnability on the machines. The new film meets all these requirements and also helps to save disposal fees due to its recyclability. At Mondi, we have the ambition to be sustainable by design and meet our customers’ sustainability requirements by providing innovative solutions,” says Thomas Kahl, project manager for EcoSolutions at Mondi Consumer Flexibles.

“For more than 120 years, it has been our passion to offer our customers the highest quality. That’s why it was particularly important in our animal welfare project to act as sustainably as possible not only along the entire value chain, from agriculture to the consumer but also in terms of packaging solutions. We were able to implement this in cooperation with our long-standing partner Mondi due to their expertise and experience in sustainable food packaging,” said Florian Hütthaler, owner of Hütthaler.

The Covid-19 pandemic led to the country-wide lockdown on 25 March 2020. It will be two years tomorrow as I write this. What have we learned in this time? Maybe the meaning of resilience since small companies like us have had to rely on our resources and the forbearance of our employees as we have struggled to produce our trade platforms.

The print and packaging industries have been fortunate, although the commercial printing industry is still to recover. We have learned more about the digital transformation that affects commercial printing and packaging. Ultimately digital will help print grow in a country where we are still far behind in our paper and print consumption and where digital is a leapfrog technology that will only increase the demand for print in the foreseeable future.

Web analytics show that we now have readership in North America and Europe amongst the 90 countries where our five platforms reach. Our traffic which more than doubled in 2020, has at times gone up by another 50% in 2021. And advertising which had fallen to pieces in 2020 and 2021, has started its return since January 2022.

As the economy approaches real growth with unevenness and shortages a given, we are looking forward to the PrintPack India exhibition in Greater Noida. We are again appointed to produce the Show Daily on all five days of the show from 26 to 30 May 2022.

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