Walki says it is building its sustainability platform ‘Zero Waste Future’ on three pillars: recyclability, compostability and renewability. The company presented its progress towards this goal at FachPack in Nuremberg from 24 to 26 September.
From frozen products and fresh goods to food service applications and non-food articles such as detergents, Walki is developing new, sustainable composite materials for consumer packaging. These include coatings based on renewable raw materials such as tall oil, which is a by-product of cellulose production, compostable coatings and so-called ‘earth coating’, which can be separated more efficiently in the paper recycling process. The company's latest development, together with partner Sabic, is the use of circular polymers obtained from plastic household waste. Walki's R&D department is also currently focusing on dispersion technology.
"More than 80 per cent of our products already consist of renewable or recycled raw materials," explains Annika Sundell, executive vice-president Innovation at Walki. "Our goal is to offer all our products to be renewable, recyclable or compostable by the year 2030.”
Walki says the new developments are part of its ‘Zero Waste Future’ sustainability platform. "Our sustainable barriers are in demand in the market, also in comparison to the standard petroleum-based range – every day we practically sell one more sustainable solution," says Sundell. The FachPack exhibition booth of the company based in Espoo, Finland, was correspondingly well attended. "We had numerous promising discussions and the interest in our innovations was enormous," says Annika Sundell. "This proves to us that we are on the right track.”
