With pressure piling on brands to transition to eco-friendly plastics, the design and production of products are in the crosshairs, writes Tom van Aken, CEO of Avantium.
Nestlé has signed the European Plastics Pact, to make 100% of its packaging recyclable or reusable and reduce its use of virgin plastics by one third by 2025.
An application to use a processing aid in plastics has been backed under certain conditions according to a panel of the European Food Safety Authority (EFSA).
European food manufacturers will soon have access to renewable polyethylene as a result of a new alliance between Brazil-based Braskem and a German bioplastics producer.
Packaging converters trying to pass on recent polymer price hikes to their food and drink manufacturing customer base may feel less resistance to such moves in the coming months with indicators of a new resilience in that packaging sector, claims an analyst.
Amcor, the world's largest producer of PET, is pushing for a third
round of price increases this year, while a report forecasts
polymer prices are set to hit new highs next month.
Competition between lower-priced resins and higher-performance
variants is set to intensify, according to a soon-to-be-released
report. The development of upgraded commodity thermoplastics is
challenging established higher-performance...
Sony Corp has announced the development of a flame-resistant
plastic made mainly of corn-based polylactide which it has jointly
developed with Mitsubishi Plastics in Japan.
A recent report by the Freedonia Group suggests that plastic film
demand in the US will increase 2.6 per cent per annum to 14.6
billion pounds in 2006.
