Joint development of unlaminated and recyclable stand-up pouches

Colines and TotalEnergies announced the successful proof of concept of an unlaminated recyclable stand-up pouch suitable for food-contact applications.

Currently the market reference is composed of a multimaterial film, resulting to non-recyclable packaging. The partners have developed a full PE recyclable unlaminated stand-up pouch, allowing to decrease the packaging thickness. The Machine Direction Orientation (MDO) film has been produced on the Colines cast line Polycast as well as the MDO line, allowing asymmetrical structure (low density sealing layer on one side, high density stiff layer on the other side). The MDO-PE film formulation is composed of TotalEnergies Supertough and unique Lumicene high density PE, offering a vast thickness range of solutions fitting customer’s needs.

The film has been printed by Cirepa, a printing company for flexible packaging, and then transformed into a Stand-Up Pouch by Dry-Top, a packaging company.

“We are proud to be part of this very important project, made possible also by the proprietary Colines technology in the field of MDO, as well as by innovative and patented solutions for the production of MDO-PE films with cast technology. Our portfolio includes various solutions for the production of “green” films, with a high recycled content or suitable for complete recycling, in order to satisfy practically all market requests".  said Nicola Lombardini, R&D Manager of Colines.

“This collaboration is in line with the recent developments to provide packaging solutions that are fully mechanically recyclable, with the end goal to bring more qualitative feedstock on the market. This latter could be used as feedstock for the recycling industry and eventually end up as RE:use polymers, part of the RE:clic range supporting our ambition of producing 30% circular polymers by 2030. This development was made possible by our broad Lumicene and Supertough product range bringing outstanding processability as well as excellent mechanical and optical properties”. said Olivier Greiner, Vice President, Polymers Europe & Orient at TotalEnergies.

This project has been detailed during the AMI Plastic Pouch seminar that took place in Barcelona, on 21-22 March.