In the packaging industry, paper is being hailed as the new saviour, so German company Covestro (Leverkusen; www.covestro.com) is taking advantage of the shift with a partially plant-based dispersion barrier coating for paper food packaging.

The company said the coating is to serve as a substitute for the commonly used paper-polyethylene-aluminium composite, and the material will make the paper fibres more readily recyclable.

The new product, Decovery CQ 6010, is said to be oil and grease-resistant and provide moisture barrier protection. Covestro cited chocolate bars, ice cream, frozen food and fresh fruit as typical examples of areas of application.

The bio-based content of 37% in the non-reactive polymer coating is produced from bark, castor beans, and corn, according to the supplier, with the rest coming from fossil-based polymers. This means it could be a carboxylic acid in combination with an alcohol, which would possibly suggest a wax-like substance or a polyester. Covestro, however, did not respond to a Plasteurope.com query on this matter.

The company said the polymer dispersion enables the “complete reprocessing and reuse of the paper packaging with high paper fibre recovery rates”, which has reportedly been confirmed by the German paper industry research and service institute Papiertechnische Stiftung (PTS, Heidenau; www.ptspaper.de/en).

A PTS spokesperson declined to comment on customer-specific testing but told Plasteurope.com that a dispersion coating generally produces better results for paper fibre yields than products using composite material with polyethylene and aluminium. However – and these, too, are important recycling factors – there could also be negative effects during recycling even in the case of a dispersion, according to the spokesperson, for example through sticky impurities or pollution of the process water.