Sustainable frozen foods packaging

In order to devel­op and imple­ment a high­ly sus­tain­able new pack­ag­ing pouch for frozen prawns, Sabic, a com­pa­ny in the chem­i­cal indus­try, has joined forces with Estiko Pack­ag­ing Solu­tions and Cold­wa­ter Prawns of Nor­way. The pouch is made from a mul­ti-lay­er film pro­duced by Estiko using a cir­cu­lar cer­ti­fied ran­dom poly­mer grade of Sabic PP QRYSTAL with an ocean bound plas­tic (OBP) con­tent of around 60 per­cent. Con­tribut­ing to the recov­ery and reuse of OBP, the inno­v­a­tive pack­ag­ing solu­tion reflects the part­ners’ over­all com­mit­ment to sus­tain­abil­i­ty and com­plies with the Unit­ed Nations’ Sus­tain­able Devel­op­ment Goal #14 for ‘Life Below Water’.

Abdul­lah Al-Otaibi, Gen­er­al Man­ag­er of Engi­neer­ing Ther­mo­plas­tics & Mar­ket Solu­tions for Petro­chem­i­cals at Sabic, states: “Recov­er­ing OBP waste that could oth­er­wise end up in our water­ways or oceans is a com­plex chal­lenge and requires close col­lab­o­ra­tion with ded­i­cat­ed val­ue chain part­ners. We are proud to present yet anoth­er suc­cess­ful joint project that demon­strates a fea­si­ble solu­tion to con­tribute to this issue with a frozen foods pack­ag­ing pouch that cap­i­tal­izes on the sus­tain­able ben­e­fits of our Tru­cir­cle pro­gram. With its high OBP con­tent, this appli­ca­tion helps all play­ers reduce their car­bon foot­print and sup­port the cir­cu­lar­i­ty of flex­i­ble packaging.”

OBP is aban­doned or inad­e­quate­ly man­aged post-con­sumer plas­tic waste found up on river­banks and in rivers to 50 kilo­me­ters inland from seashores. In an advanced recy­cling process, it is con­vert­ed into an alter­na­tive feed­stock which Sabic uses to pro­duce cer­ti­fied cir­cu­lar poly­mers that can then be returned into the mate­r­i­al stream for exam­ple for man­u­fac­tur­ing high-qual­i­ty flex­i­ble pack­ag­ing prod­ucts. Estiko Pack­ag­ing Solu­tions, the cor­ner stone of Estiko Group (Esto­nia) and leader in pro­vid­ing sus­tain­able pack­ag­ing mate­ri­als in North­ern Europe, uses a Sabic PP QRYSTAL ran­dom poly­mer from this Tru­cir­cle port­fo­lio to pro­duce a mul­ti-lay­er flex­i­ble film for pouch­es used in the pack­ag­ing of frozen prawns at Cold­wa­ter Prawns of Norway.

Taavi Tikk, R&D Man­ag­er at Estiko Pack­ag­ing Solu­tions, says, “Sus­tain­abil­i­ty is close to our heart. That’s why we at Estiko base all our activ­i­ties on the aim of pre­serv­ing a liv­able envi­ron­ment for future gen­er­a­tions and pro­vide respon­si­ble pack­ag­ing solu­tions for our cus­tomers with no com­pro­mis­es in qual­i­ty, food safe­ty or con­ve­nience. In com­pre­hen­sive tri­als on our exist­ing film lines, we found that Sabic’s ran­dom PP mate­r­i­al with OBP pro­vid­ed the right drop-in-replace­ment to meet the require­ments of Cold­wa­ter Prawns of Nor­way AS, includ­ing punc­ture and tear resis­tance as well as high trans­paren­cy for the clear part of the pouch that lets con­sumers see the pack­aged prawns.”

The pack­ag­ing pouch aligns close­ly with the sus­tain­able har­vest­ing prac­tices of Cold­wa­ter Prawns of Nor­way. In con­trast to farmed king prawns, the company’s cold water prawns are caught from the deep waters of the Bar­ents Sea, then cooked, peeled and indi­vid­u­al­ly quick frozen (IQF) for pack­ag­ing and sales. Their slow growth gives them a juici­er tex­ture and a more intense, sweet­er flavor.

Hege Furnes, COO at Cold­wa­ter Prawns of Nor­way, com­ments: “We are pas­sion­ate about prawns, puri­ty and the plan­et, and when it comes to the wel­fare of the plan­et, our mot­to is that ‘it can’t get pure enough’. The mate­r­i­al choice for our new pouch­es meets with our care for the ecosys­tem on which our busi­ness relies. By using an OBP based pack­ag­ing prod­uct, we are mak­ing an active con­tri­bu­tion to pre­vent aban­doned plas­tic lit­ter from pol­lut­ing the sea. In addi­tion, the pouch­es are ful­ly recy­clable in exist­ing mate­r­i­al recov­ery sys­tems for flex­i­ble packaging.”

The cer­ti­fied cir­cu­lar solu­tion is mass bal­ance cer­ti­fied under the Inter­na­tion­al Sus­tain­abil­i­ty & Car­bon Cer­ti­fi­ca­tion (ISCC) PLUS chain of cus­tody. This means that the mate­r­i­al flow is con­trolled and tracked from the OBP to each pouch fol­low­ing a set of pre­de­fined and trans­par­ent rules. As a result, for every ton of cer­ti­fied cir­cu­lar poly­mer used in the pro­duc­tion of the PP resin, Estiko Pack­ag­ing Solu­tions can claim an equiv­a­lent amount of flex­i­ble film as cer­ti­fied cir­cu­lar. Cold­wa­ter Prawns of Nor­way AS, in turn, can doc­u­ment the enhanced sus­tain­abil­i­ty towards con­sumers by indi­cat­ing the respon­si­bly sourced pack­ag­ing con­tent on the pouches.