BioPak, KM Packaging Services, and agriculture company Costa have come together to create a pack for Woolworths’ sweet berry truss tomatoes.
The pack uses 90 per cent less plastic than a conventional APET clamshell punnet and combines BioPak’s home-compostable sugarcane tray with KM’s K Peel printed lidding film. The pack is heat sealed using a Proseal GT1s-Max automatic inline sealer, according to a statement from KM Packaging.
Richard Fine, founder, product developer and sustainability director at BioPak, told Food & Drink Business the project took some research and development to get the design right.
“Ultimately, it is replacing a PET tray with one made of moulded sugarcane pulp fibre. It’s home-compostable, as well as recyclable in the paper stream,” he said.
“The trays needed to fit into the existing standardised crates. They also needed to be able to de-nest easily and accept the top film.”
Fine pointed out that the trays are made form renewable resources and are carbon neutral.
According to a statement from BioPak, if 50m sugarcane trays were composted at home, the emissions offset would be equivalent to driving a car around the world 93 times.
