This unique packaging is 90 per cent renewable and currently available on the shelf in Portugal, with industrial-scale production expected by 2025
Tetra Pak and Lactogal have launched an aseptic beverage carton featuring a paper-based barrier. This is part of a large-scale technology validation, involving around 25 million packages and is currently ongoing in Portugal. Made of approximately 80 per cent paperboard, the package increases the renewable content to 90 per cent, reduces its carbon footprint by one-third (33 per cent) and has been certified as Carbon Neutral by the Carbon Trust.
Greenhouse gas emissions, food waste and plastic littering are cited as the top three environmental sustainability concerns facing food and beverage (F&B) businesses today, and this is expected to remain the case over the next five years. Packaging solutions like these, that expand the amount of paper and lower the carbon footprint, while ensuring food safety, can help the industry overcome these challenges.
In 2015, Tetra Pak was the first in the industry to introduce a package made fully from plant-based renewable materials – paperboard and sugarcane-based plastic. The Tetra Rex Plant-based package, suitable for cold chain distribution, is fully renewable, and the company has delivered approximately 6.5 billion of these packages to customers around the world to date.
Now, the launch of the Tetra Brik Aseptic 200 Slim Leaf carton with a paper-based barrier, together with Lactogal, provides a package that can be distributed under ambient conditions, while hitting the 90 per cent renewable content mark. This brings Tetra Pak one step closer to its ambition of a beverage carton made solely from responsibly sourced renewable or recycled materials, fully recyclable and carbon neutral. The company is aiming for industrial-scale production of the solution by 2025.