Faerch has said that a new product family will replace all carbon black-based colors of CPET Ready Meal packaging in the UK within 36 months.
Image: Faerch unveils new solution to replace carbon black trays in the UK. Photo: Courtesy of Alexandru G. STAVRICĂ on Unsplash.
Faerch noted that the new product family comprises of 80% post-consumer recycled mixed-color PET and is NIR detectable by the UK’s existing recycling infrastructure possessing proven benefits of CPET.
No extra color is added to the recycled input material during production to give a natural color with slightly varying shades. The material has passed through NIR detection in its prior life as a bottle or tray. The new product is available for UK customers in all current shapes and sizes.
Faerch Group CEO Lars Gade Hansen said: “We very much appreciate the increased awareness for responsible packaging in the UK. It enables us to provide innovative solutions to forward thinking retailers while we all continue to benefit from the superior properties of our CPET solutions, in particular on food safety and low carbon footprint.”
The company said that the natural color scheme conveys a clear message to consumers and provides a direction towards use of responsible materials in packaging.
Faerch offers a recycling program to retailers who switch to the new product line. The new CPET product will be recycled at 4PET, the recycling company owned by Faerch, and then processed into new food grade trays at one of its manufacturing sites.
The company offers its CPET ID solution for applications with black packaging, where a black tone is used that can be detected in typical sorting facilities.
The company said that the CPET is capable of becoming packaging material of choice for most ready meal producers and retailers and CPET solutions protects food under strict regulations.
Furthermore, the importance of CPET in ready meal packaging is anticipated to increase with growing concerns among experts regarding migration of aluminum packaging in hot use applications and limited recyclability of laminated pulp/board materials.
Faerch has acquired Dutch recycler 4PET in 2018 and has successfully closed the loop on PET trays, allowing tray-to-tray recycling on an industrial scale to make food packaging fully circular.