The world does not need more food packaging. It needs better, renewable ones. Chemistry plays a key role in increasing sustainability and reducing food waste by enabling safe and functional fiber-based packaging. But the features that make a food package more sustainable, more durable or smarter are almost always invisible. Equally invisible are the many solutions that can reduce and prevent food and plastic waste throughout the supply chain. It’s time to pay attention to the unseen.
Compliance, safety and hygiene are of utmost importance especially when it comes to food contact materials. Here, chemistry plays a key role.
Join our webinar on April 9th at 2 p.m. CET to learn about the existing regulation for food contact materials, how safety and compliance of the food service board is ensured, and what are the solutions to impurities like non-intentionally added substances.
The global challenges of food loss and plastic waste present great opportunities for us to come up with practical solutions.
Food packagingMeet our expert
Refrigerators full of leaking cartons, hands greasy from fast-food packages – welcome to a world without chemistry. Though invisible to the naked eye, chemistry plays a big role in our everyday lives and is a key enabler in the move toward renewable food packaging alternatives.
Food packagingMeet our expert
Recycling and regulation emerge as some of the keywords of our time. These topics go hand-in-hand with great global challenges we need to solve. Here, Kemira has valuable expertise to offer.
Food packagingWebinar
Join our webinar to learn about the existing regulation for food contact materials, how safety and compliance of the food service board is ensured and what are the solutions to impurities like non-intentionally added substances.
Meet our expert
Sami Puttonen, Senior Manager in Sizing & Surface Business Development, sees the bigger picture when it comes to food packaging. After 11 years working at Kemira he believes that the solutions to the global issues of food waste and sustainable packaging could come from many surprising directions.
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With roughly one third of the food we produce every year ending up on the trash pile instead of in our stomachs, cutting down food waste is becoming an urgent global priority. High-quality food-grade packaging is part of the solution to this problem.
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A few decades ago, you could’ve become a billionaire in plastics. And now that we’re waking up to the looming crises posed by plastics, how can we both mitigate disaster and create business opportunities?
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Food is wasted at every phase of the production and consumption chain, but the single biggest point of waste are private households – yours and mine. It is within our powers to change this.
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From forest to consumer to recycling bin, the lifecycle of a paper coffee cup is far more complex than you might think – and chemistry plays an important role in every single step, bringing value for all stakeholders in the value chain. What do these stakeholders expect at each stage of the lifecycle, and what role can they play in helping to close the loop and achieve a zero-waste future for the paper cup?
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With us since the 1870s, the paper coffee cup helps millions of people around the world kick-start their day. What may seem like a mundane and functional item is the result of years of research and development. With consumers and big business alike increasingly seeking ways to reduce their impact on the environment, what part can everyone’s favorite way to start the day play?
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Sustainability consists of small choices we make. Seven million disposable coffee cups a day in the UK mean seven million decisions made every day. What do you drink your coffee out of?
Whitepaper
A two-day outbreak of bacterial spores on a board machine can lead to the loss of thousands of tons of finished food packaging board, at a cost approaching millions of euros.
Article
From a simple cup of black coffee to a salted caramel mocha frappuccino, each coffee drinker has their own favorite way of indulging in this caffeinated beverage. Many choose to enjoy their drink on the go which requires a lot from the cup.
High quality packaging board both protects a wide variety of products and promotes brands in the best possible way. This requires properties such as strength and stiffness, lightest possible weight as well as superb printing and converting of the package. With liquid packaging and food service grades, strict standards for hygiene and cleanliness must be met. We offer industry-leading chemistry expertise to help board manufacturers reach all desired qualities.
Hygiene is the top priority for food service board suppliers. At the same time, paper machines are known to be prone to problems related to uncontrolled microbiological (MB) growth. The combination of potential troublesome MB growth and the need for a very high level of hygiene makes MB control a subject no paperboard producer can ignore.
Biofilm or slime growth on board machine surfaces can have drastic negative effects on both machine runnability and end-product quality. Uncontrolled bacterial growth causes unstable wet-end chemistry, taste or odor issues, spoilage of papermaking additives, and harmful bacterial sporulation. For example, a two-day outbreak of bacterial spores on a board machine can lead to the loss of thousands of tons of finished food packaging board, at a cost approaching millions of euros. With Kemira’s chemistry and application expertise, you can cure and protect your board machine from troubles caused by microbes.
Fiber based food packaging materials are more sustainable than plastic, but they set high demands for qualities such as hydrophobation and liquid resistance. Liquid resistance is one of the most important packaging board characteristics that is needed for all take-away food packages such as noodle cups, coffee mugs or hamburger boxes. Thanks to liquid resistance, consumers are able to keep their fingers clean and liquids and grease inside the food packages.
In addition, board should be easily printed on and converted into highly appealing packages with brilliant color reproduction. High-quality packages should not only protect the enclosed products, but also help promote brands in highly competitive markets – where every little detail counts. All this requires expertise in chemistry.
Kemira is a world-leader in sizing chemistries that provide liquid resistance to your packaging board. We also have a broad expertise in applications and analysis methods for improved printability and convertibility.
Today’s consumers do a lot of shopping online which has driven changes in packaging materials. Product packages have to look appealing, be strong enough to survive being shipped around the world, and still look good when they are finally delivered. At the same time, consumers are expecting more sustainable packaging materials. Lighter weight packaging is one way to improve sustainability: lighter packages mean lighter load and reduced fuel consumption as well as reduced transportation costs.
Kemira chemistries enable reducing basis weights in board-making with no decrease in strength, stiffness or performance. We offer a portfolio of strength chemistries that enable the lightweighting of your sheet while increasing the strength and quality of your finished products. We can also improve your machine runnability and reduce sheet breaks and downtime. Overall profitability can be improved through fiber savings, lower energy consumption in the drying phase, less tonnage to transport, and reduced volume of the finished products.
Chemistry enables safe and functional fiber-based packaging – and plays a key role in increasing sustainability and reducing food waste. But the features that make a food package more sustainable, more durable or smarter are almost always invisible.
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