— By Plasteurope.com staff — 

Packaging group Walki (Espoo, Finland; www.walki.com) and the French manufacturer of bio-based and biodegradable plastics based on milk proteins, Lactips (Saint-Jean-Bonnefonds; www.lactips.com), plan to work together in future. They aim to develop paper-based food packaging with a casein-based polymer coating.

“Casein is obtained as a by-product when processing milk. Using casein, Lactips has developed a bio-based, natural polymer that is 100% water-soluble and biodegradable. As a result, it can be recycled in the paper stream without leaving any microplastic residues,” said Mats Käldström, R&D manager at Walki.

Lactips will be supplying Walki with the biopolymer so that the packaging manufacturer can conduct pilot tests with paper and cardboard as a substrate material in its Technical Competence Center in Pietarsaari, Finland. “We expect the new packaging material to have heat-sealing properties in addition to grease barriers, which will mean it can be processed on existing packaging lines,” a Walki spokesperson told Plasteurope.com. Neither partner provided details of the delivery volume.

With 1,700 employees at 16 production sites in Finland, Belgium, France, Germany, Poland, Spain, the UK, and China, the Finnish packaging group, which has belonged to Japanese paper and packaging group Oji Holdings (Tokyo; www.ojiholdings.co.jp) since the spring, generated sales of EUR 627 mn last year.

Lactips, founded in 2014, has operated a production facility in the Pays de la Loire region of France since 2022. With a production capacity of 3,000 t/y, the company currently employs 45 people. 

The Lactips granules are used to produce water-soluble films for detergent and cleaning tabs, among other things. They are also suitable for food contact.

— Translated by Plasteurope.com correspondent