UPM’s Specialty Materials business has teamed up with Siegwerk and Uteco to develop a secondary paper packaging material that is moisture- and grease-resistant.
UPM provides the barrier base paper, which is coated with Siegwerk’s Cirkit Bar Seal coating applied using Uteco’s high-definition advanced flexo technology.
Siegwerk’s Cirkit coatings have been developed to replace plastic films.
Samples were shown at this week’s Pack Expo show in Chicago. The paper can be heat sealed and is recyclable through standard recycling streams.
Gilles Le Moigne, head of circular economy coatings at Siegwerk, hailed the results and said the trio had created “a recyclable paper-based solution that delivers the functional performance converters and brand owners expect”.
“This project shows how innovation in coatings can help unlock new opportunities for reducing dependence on fossil-based packaging materials,” he said.
UPM Specialty Materials sales director Marco Tramontano commented: “As packaging legislation, such as EU PPWR, evolve globally, brand owners need practical ways to reduce plastic without compromising performance.
“Together with Uteco and Siegwerk, we have shown that paper content can be increased to up to 90% in such packaging, while maintaining the performance required for demanding applications.”
A spokesperson at Uteco’s printing and technical department said that joint production trials had shown that paper packaging can perform efficiently at an industrial scale.
“By integrating coating, printing and heat sealing in a single pass, made possible by advanced technology and the right equipment, this solution helps converters produce functional paper packaging while saving time, energy and production costs.”
The firms described the paper as “a practical entry point into paper packaging” that offered brand owners a way to test paper-based formats in demanding applications “while the primary packaging continues to safeguard product integrity”.