Improved production processes and clever design is helping a Danish manufacturer of plastics food containers meet its five-year environmental goals.
Faerch Plast says it has reduced the weight of CPET (crystalline polyethylene) containers by an average of 11% since 2008, putting the company on target to achieve a general weight reduction of produced items of 30% by 2013.
Joe Iannidinardo, MD of Faerch Plast’s UK division says: “Clever design together with improved production processes has helped us reduce the weight of our packaging without compromising performance, quality or food safety. Using less material during the manufacturing process has enabled us to further reduce our carbon footprint and produce less waste.
The aim is to work with customers to develop ‘innovative, hygienic and effective packaging that protects and preserves food products, but which uses less material and is kinder to the environment’.
For weight reduction there have been on-going changes to tooling design. Producing CPET trays is different to the normal thermoforming process, explains Faerch Plast . The soft pre-formed container has to be transferred from a hot to a cold mould. Making the pack thicker always helped with this process. It is now possible to safely and easily handle much thinner trays at 500 or 600 micron.
In addition, tray and tooling designs have been adapted to allow better control of material distribution meaning areas in the trays that were traditionally thinner and weaker are now less so.
Faerch Plast recently published its Green Accounts for the 14th consecutive year, audited by PriceWaterhouseCooper.
