On the front foot when it comes to driving sustainable innovation, packaging giant Tetra Pak has made huge strides in partnership with its customers. Marketing director Jaymie Pagdato shares the latest company developments, and market trends, with Lindy Hughson.
Sustainability remains dominant as we look at trends shaping the food and beverage industry in 2023, with consumers wanting to see less packaging waste through recycling, reduce littering and low impact on environment. So says Tetra Pak marketing director Jaymie Pagdato, who notes that consumer interest in sustainability has also shifted.
“A few a years ago it was all about recycling but now climate change is a growing concern, and closely linked to that is awareness of the carbon footprint of the products we’re buying and consuming,” she says. “In consumer research studies Tetra Pak has conducted, the primary tension in the room is ‘we should not make our environmental crisis any worse’.” As a producer of cartons for food and beverage products, and one which has sustainability firmly embedded in its DNA, Tetra Pak’s investment in R&D to build on its vision to deliver on the world’s most sustainable food package is ongoing.
An LCA study of food and beverage packaging in Australia and New Zealand conducted by thinkstep in 2020 showed that cartons have the lowest carbon footprint compared to other beverage packaging formats including glass, PET and recycled PET.
“The carton performs best compared to other forms of packaging because of its material efficiency – it uses less material – and its mass, which is mostly fibre from a renewable plant source,” Pagdato explains. “Lifecycle matters because over 99 per cent of packaging impact to climate change has occurred before it hits the shelf,” she continues. “This is contributed the most by the source of the material and its distribution.”
When it comes to recycling, Pagdato points out, the carbon contribution of recycling all other packaging formats is also greater (due to energy usage) than the carbon contribution of a single-use beverage carton.
Uptick in paper-based uptake
The case for paper-based cartons in food and beverage packaging is solid, Padgato maintains, and this is reflected in an increase in uptake of this packaging format by big brands.
Rosella and SuperBoost are two notable brands to make that shift in 2022, with Rosella moving from a metal can into a carton for soup range, and SuperBoost choosing cartons for its sports hydration products. There’s huge potential in other categories too.
Pagdato believes the rise of plant-based beverages in Australia presents opportunities for beverage manufacturers and packaging companies to evolve and innovate when it comes to product formulation and packaging in order to grow this category – and Tetra Pak is partnering with brands to lead the way, she says.
Dairy alternatives or plant-based beverages have seen their popularity skyrocket in the last few years in the Australian market. According to Euromonitor research, health and environmentally conscious consumers are among the factors fueling growth in demand for plant-based beverages, a clear link between consumers who are more conscious about sustainability and those who have a higher propensity to buy plant-based milk.
“As consumers seek alternatives by opting for plant-based beverages that nourish not only their body but also the environment, beverage manufacturers need to look at their product and packaging, ensuring it is sustainable across the entire value chain,” Pagdato says.
Minor Figures, Inside Out, So Good, Vitasoy and Madame Tiger are some of the emerging and established brands who are continuing to lead the way in plant-based innovation – in collaboration with Tetra Pak as their processing and packaging partner.
“Across all categories, consumers are looking for the authentic narrative behind the product, and not just the manufacturing provenance, the packaging story too,” she says. “Brand owners are responding by moving their FSC-certified logos from the side to the prime position on front of pack, for example.”
“Beverage cartons have an important and growing role to play in de-carbonising packaging because they are made mostly of paperboard, which is renewable plant fibre,” Pagdato adds, pointing to the Material Economics work, ‘Sustainable packaging – the role of materials substitution’, which shows that a 65 per cent reduction in emissions from packaging is possible for fibre-based packaging whereas even with a high recycling rate emissions from the production of plastic packaging fall by just 20 per cent.
The study recommends substitution of plastics with fibre-based packaging as one of the largest potential levers to decarbonise packaging.
Barrier breakthrough
One of the factors presenting a challenge when it comes to recycling Tetra Pak cartons is the aluminium barrier layer integrated into the paperboard structure. But this could soon be overcome.
In exciting news from Tetra Pak, following the successful completion of a 15-month commercial technology validation in Japan of a polymer-based barrier replacing the aluminium layer, the company has now also moved to the next level of development – testing a fibre-based barrier that marks a first for food carton packages distributed under ambient conditions.
“This is currently at market trial stage; however, it signals yet another breakthrough in the company’s long-term roadmap towards developing an aseptic package that is fully renewable, fully recyclable and carbon-neutral,” Pagdato says.
Carton recycling in Australia
While the sustainability case for cartons is strong from a packaging production perspective, recyclability and material recovery remains important, and here the responsibility extends beyond beverage companies alone. There needs to be an effective recycling infrastructure that can process the carton packaging once consumers dispose of it properly.
In further exciting news from Tetra Pak, February sees the opening of a recycling facility in New South Wales, developed in partnership by Tetra Pak and saveBoard Australia, together with other industry players. The facility will turn carton packaging and other waste into high-performance low-carbon building materials to substitute plaster board, particle board, and oriented strand board.
As the first of its kind in Australia, the pioneering recycling facility aims to reduce the dependency on exporting cartons overseas, the practice that has been in place to date, and increase the number of cartons collected for recycling onshore.
saveBoard has also received funding support from the Victorian Government and is finalising similar arrangements with the Queensland Government, with plans to have a recycling facility operating in Queensland within 2023, and in Victoria in 2024.
Pagdato says, “The saveBoard remanufacturing process has ‘full carton’ capability – the entire used beverage carton, including any on-pack straw, neck and cap can be recycled together.”
Ahead of the pack
Joining forces with leading beverage producers, last year, Tetra Pak launched tethered caps on carton packages. Marking a significant milestone in the company’s long-term work on design for recycling, five new tethered cap solutions have been introduced across Ireland, the Baltics, Spain and Germany in different product categories – a market first for these geographies, and timely as the EU introduces legislation mandating tethered caps from July this year.
“Tethered caps play an important role in preventing litter, as the cap will stay attached to the package,” Padgato says. “This helps reduce the carbon footprint of the carton when they are chosen. Plant-based options, made from polymers derived from responsibly sourced sugarcane, increase the renewable content of the package.”
In tandem, the company is accelerating the expansion of its paper straws offering to ensure further renewable and low carbon materials across its range of packaging solutions. The aim of this is to address a broad range of customer sustainability needs without compromising on food safety, while still delivering on the end-user drinking experience
“Significantly, Tetra Pak did not lock in the IP on this development so that other packaging producers could have easy access to the technology,” Pagdato says. Paper straws are now widely available.
Across the board, Tetra Pak has its eye on new end-use opportunities, developing products for emerging markets such as alcoholic beverages in cartons, collaborating with customers to drive innovation towards a sustainable future.
This article was first published in the January-February 2023 print issue of PKN Packaging News, p14.
