Tetra Pak says it has completed the worldwide roll-out of a new “stronger, more robust” paperboard packaging material for ambient and roll-fed chilled liquid products which it says incorporates less plastic, thus enabling it to reduce its global polymer consumption by 50,000 tons annually.
The “Wide” material, already successfully launched in Australia, Japan and Brazil, and much of Europe in the past four years, incorporates an extrusion coated LLDPE inner barrier coating said to be 30% thinner than the previous LDPE coating, which requires fewer polymers to produce. Consequently, the percentage of renewable material used – paperboard – is increased by 3.5%. Tetra Pak says the production method for Wide packs and the inner coating’s enhanced performance will also enable it to reduce its gross annual energy consumption by 17%.
By March Wide will be the “de facto standard” material for all Tetra Pak carton packages, and all the company’s factories will be using it.
