Faerch has announced the introduction of a new product family replacing all carbon black-based colours of CPET Ready Meal packaging in the UK within 36 months. The new product family contains 80 per cent post-consumer recycled mixed-colour PET, is NIR detectable by the UK’s existing recycling infrastructure and possesses the proven benefits of CPET. It is available for UK customers in all current shapes and sizes.
The new product line has no extra colour added to the recycled input material, resulting in a natural colour with slightly varying shades. Detectability of the trays is guaranteed, as the material has successfully passed through NIR detection in its prior life as a bottle or tray.
The new natural colour scheme also conveys a clear message to consumers:‘This tray is made from recycled material and can be recycled again and again’. It provides direction towards responsible materials in Ready Meal packaging and considering used trays as a valuable resource rather than waste.
Faerch offers a highly innovative and proven recycling program to retailers who switch to the new product line: An identical quantity of the volume of Faerch trays a retailer purchases will be sourced as post-consumer waste locally in the UK. It will be recycled at 4PET, the recycling company owned by Faerch, and then processed into new food grade trays of the same quality at one of Faerch’s manufacturing sites.
This represents a huge step towards circularity and helps to develop the market for plastic consumer waste in the UK, which is vital for its future. “We very much appreciate the increased awareness for responsible packaging in the UK”, says Lars Gade Hansen, CEO, Faerch Group. “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."
In contrast to other plastic materials, like PP which consists of 100 per cent virgin material, CPET trays from Faerch contain 80 per cent recycled post-consumer content and can be recycled to food grade products of the same quality again and again. Faerch’s CPET solutions protect food and comply with the strictest regulation ensuring food safety in the entire temperature range between -40 C and +220 C. The importance of CPET in Ready Meal packaging is expected to increase as growing concerns arise among experts regarding migration of aluminium packaging in hot use applications and limited recyclability of laminated pulp/board materials.
To maximise future recycling rates, black plastic applications will be important. However, today’s sorting facilities in the UK do not detect carbon black-based plastics effectively resulting in post-consumer waste from black trays being frequently unavailable for recycling after only one use-cycle. For applications where black packaging is critical, Faerch offers its CPET ID solution, a black tone that typical sorting facilities can detect.
Faerch aims at making food packaging fully circular. With last year’s acquisition of Dutch recycler 4PET, Faerch has successfully closed the loop on PET trays allowing tray-to-tray recycling on an industrial scale. Faerch’s products are fully recyclable and comprise market-leading shares of recycled content of up to 100 per cent.
