Separating cartonboard from plastic made easy

In hardly any other industry do emotions have as great an influence on the success of a product as in the food and beverage industry. Products are bought that correspond to consumer trends. Important factors are currently health and safety, nutrition and well-being, lifestyle and quality of life. These points shape both the product and its packaging.

The market for food packaging is under high pressure to innovate. Consumers are looking for products that appeal to them visually and that taste good to them. Today, however, the decisive factor for a purchase is increasingly also whether the packaging is safe and environmentally compatible. For food manufacturers, the design of packaging is therefore becoming one of the central challenges. At the same time, however, it is also important to be able to produce the designed packaging in an automated, quality-checked manner and in large quantities. Complex packaging requires complex equipment, the investment in which also contributes significantly to packaging prices.

This was recognized by the managing director of ECKO-Pack GmbH, Marcel Lewerenz, during his work as a sales representative for tray sealers of the cooperation partner Italienpack. As a result, he designed and developed a completely new, innovative packaging tray. This tray, based on an unglued, waste-free cardboard tray with inserted film, is characterized not only by the low material usage, but also by the fact that the consumer automatically separates plastic and cardboard when opening the product. In this way, both materials can be taken separately to the collection of recyclable materials.

ECKO-TRAY® trays can be used for frozen, chilled and non-refrigerated foods. They are optionally available in white virgin fiber quality or made of partially recycled cardboard in a brown natural look. The minimum amount of plastic currently technically possible is used, which saves up to 80 % of the plastic used in conventional MAP packaging for each food product packed in the trays. Separating the cardboard and plastic components is child's play When packaging processed foods, the cardboard trays are lined with a plastic film designed to prevent both soaking of the cardboard and the introduction of substances and loss of flavor and vitamins. Small objects such as instructions, spice mixtures, additives, etc. can also be fixed between the skin film and the tray without coming into direct contact with the food.

During the production process, the cardboard trays get their inherent stability from the blown-in film. When the consumer opens the product, he peels off the cover film and can use the product. What remains is the foiled tray, which the consumer then separates from the two materials and sends to the respective recycling stream. This type of paperboard tray was the first of its kind to be classified as a combination packaging, which enabled a recycling assessment to be carried out by an institute.