Finnish packaging giant Huhtamaki (Espoo; www.huhtamaki.com) has for the first time used recycled plastics in its flexible tubes. The group, which posted sales of EUR 3.4 bn last year, said its flexible packaging business succeeded in integrating recycled plastics into one of its standard plastic barrier laminates for tubes.

The polyethylene recyclate used in the process, called “Mersalen”, was developed by APK (Merseburg / Germany; www.apk-ag.de). The tubes produced by Huhtamaki comprise nearly 20% Mersalen, and the packaging specialist said it planned to increase this figure while also testing recyclates based on different feedstock streams.

Florian Riedl, APK’s business development director, said Mersalen’s performance was nearly identical with the standard referenced plastic barrier laminate structure produced with virgin LDPE. rLDPE based purely on post-consumer waste and suitable for food and cosmetic packaging, which requires food contact compliance, is not yet available on the European market.