Top Honour at the Green Product Award for PE-Free Paper Packaging
Hülzweiler, June 2022. At a festive award ceremony in Munich, the Green Product Awards were once again presented to products and services that stand out in terms of design, innovation and sustainability. The prize in the jury category “Best of New Materials” went to the environmentally friendly barrier coating NP® SiOPack® from Nanopool GmbH. The innovative solution enables the production of PE-free, compostable and recyclable packaging for direct food contact. Food safety without plastic content: The long-standing challenge of combining sustainability and safety in the packaging industry is a thing of the past! Until now, natural-fibre-based packaging solutions could only achieve sufficient packaging and food safety in demanding applications with the help of coating materials such as polyethylene (PE) or bio-PE. Coating with the innovative solution NP® SiOPack®, for example, achieves the same values in terms of water stability and food safety on cardboard packaging as a PE coating, but as a nature-based product it can be fully returned to the natural cycle. The multi-award-winning solution from Nanopool thus succeeds in resolving the supposed contradiction between environmental friendliness and product safety. Technologically sophisticated application for cardboard packaging: For the technical implementation, Nanopool found the ideal support in Van Genechten Packaging (VGP), the pioneer of sustainable coatings. The European manufacturer of cardboard packaging, headquartered in Belgium, has particular expertise in food packaging and has been working on new sustainable solutions and technologies for years. Together with its experts, the company developed the machine-based implementation of the coating of cardboard packaging for industrial production. In practical application at VGP, the material is coated with NP® SiOPack® and can then be easily processed further for any packaging application. “An excellent, more sustainable technology”: This year’s jury of the Green Product Award also recognised the particular relevance of this environmentally compatible coating for food packaging, describing NP® SiOPack® as “an excellent, more sustainable technology for paper and disposable products” that also makes it easy for consumers to intuitively recognise that packaging with this natural coating is recyclable and compostable. The ultra-thin barrier is neither visible nor tangible to the naked senses, which is why packaging made of paper, cardboard or other natural fibres treated with NP® SiOPack®, unlike PE-coated products, cannot be distinguished visually or haptically from the untreated raw material. The effect of the NP® SiOPack® finish, however, is clearly recognisable: absorbent natural materials become reliably repellent to water, oil and grease, dirt and even germs. The result is safe packaging for dairy products, liquids, frozen products, soaps and detergents and much more, which can simply be disposed of with waste paper after use and does not burden nature even when the human factor strikes and someone improperly discards their packaging in the woods. Quick implementation for packaging manufacturers: The fact that coating with NP® SiOPack® can be integrated into existing production processes for packaging manufacturers, both on the finished packaging product and during industrial production, makes the barrier coating a practical solution that is being positively received by customers who are increasingly aware of sustainability. This practical relevance was one of the points that the experienced jury of the Green Product Award rated particularly positively. Together towards the goal of sustainability: Since 2013, the international Green Product Award, in cooperation with the […]