— By Plasteurope.com staff — 

Huhtamaki (Espoo; Finland www.huhtamaki.com) has introduced a new fibre-based packaging for yoghurts, desserts, and other milk products to the German market under the name ProDairy. Compared with conventional paper cups, such as those used for coffee-to-go, these new packs reportedly contain less plastic. According to Huhtamaki, the content is below 10%.

In this innovation, the usual outer layer of polyethylene is replaced by a coating, which, along with the PE inner layer, provides an enhanced moisture barrier for chilled products. However, the Finnish packaging company did not disclose further details about the coating’s composition. The shelf-life of products packaged in ProDairy is comparable to that of those in polypropylene or polystyrene cups, said Herwin Wichers, head of FMCG, fibre foodservice at Huhtamaki, in reply to an enquiry from Plasteurope.com. The paper cups can also be closed with conventional sealing lids made of PP film, for example.

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Because in Germany only packaging with a plastic content of less than 5% is allowed to enter the paper waste flows, the cups must be disposed of in the yellow bins of the country’s recycling system. With the dual systems, however, there is a lack of suitable recycling capacities for these paper packs laminated with plastic. This had been repeatedly pointed out by Germany’s central packaging register ZSVR, (Osnabrück; www.verpackungsregister.org).

Whereas packaging consumption in Germany declined in the year 2023 (more recent figures are not yet available) – consumption of plastic packaging, for example, fell by 5.8% to 3.03 mn t – the demand for paper-based composite packaging has been increasing for some years now. Their market share rose in 2023 by around 3% to 352,600 t.

With annual sales of most recently around 35.6 bn, the milk industry is the biggest segment of the German food sector.

— Translated by Jon Relton