Elopak is investing in and becoming a co-owner of Blue Ocean Closures, aspiring to drive the shift into fibre-based beverage cartons and encourage further growth for both companies.
Blue Ocean Closures uses a proprietary vacuum press forming technology to produce recyclable, fibre-based closures with the aim of replacing plastic alternatives. Elopak’s investment comes with the exclusive rights to market, sell, and distribute these caps globally for gable top cartons, including Elopak’s Pure-Pak and D-PAK designs.
Applying these caps to Elopak’s cartons is hoped to help reduce their plastic content and overall carbon footprint by increasing the use of paper fibres.
At the same time, the company will support Blue Ocean Closures in bringing the first applications to market alongside its existing brand partners and accelerating early developments.
By uniting two companies and R&D environments, the partnership is anticipated to bolster Blue Ocean Closures’ growth strategy, align with Elopak’s ‘Repackaging tomorrow’ strategy, and help ‘develop the caps and closures for the future’.
“The beverage carton market has been a top priority for us from the very start,” said Blue Ocean Closures CEO Lars Sandberg. “Elopak is a leader in the Gable Top segment, a global packaging concept where we see the first high-volume use cases for replacing plastic with fiber-based closures. Addressing this field together with Elopak marks an important milestone for Blue Ocean Closures.”
“We are proud to be partnering with Blue Ocean Closures in further exploring this exciting technology, complementary to our ongoing R&D activities,” commented Thomas Körmendi, CEO of Elopak. “BOC’s fiber-based closures are a promising solution that can support Elopak’s vision for a more renewable, low-carbon, and low-plastic dependant packaging sector.”
“We are delighted to have Elopak join our partnership of leading industrial owners,” added Lars Sandberg, CEO of Blue Ocean Closures. “We share Elopak’s vision for reshaping the future of packaging and are excited to learn from their global network and decades of experience in sustainable innovation.”
Earlier this year, Nissha emerged as another co-owner of Blue Ocean Closures. This partnership plans to unlock a substantial scale-up of volumes and meet global market demand for sustainability-minded packaging formats.
Both investments come after Blue Ocean Closures and Paboco unveiled the ‘industry’s first’ market-ready combination of a paper bottle and fibre-based cap last year, which was scheduled to hit the market in early 2025.
Meanwhile, we previously spoke to Elopak CEO Thomas Körmendi about the plastic versus paper debate – the pros and cons of each material, the industry’s stance on the controversy, and how it might influence packaging to evolve in the future.
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