News
The largest Belarusian flexo printing house Uniflex has announced it has started industrial production of mono-material structure packaging suitable for recycling.
Its development and implementation are the result of both growing demand from customers and end consumers and tightening of legislation in different countries, where governments are tightening environmental standards for packaging.
In 2021, the company said it successfully produced and shipped ready-made bags from mono-material structures for such segments as dairy, confectionery, grocery, pet food, and household chemicals. It said eco-friendly packaging for other segments is also in testing phase.
Generally, packaging found on the store shelves consists of several layers of different types of plastic (PET, PE, PP, etc.). Each solves one of the manufacturer’s tasks: one layer is responsible for the formation of seams, the other performs a barrier function to make it possible to extend the shelf life of the product, etc. During the production of multilayer packaging, the layers are laminated together and as a result the packaging can be difficult to recycle – delamination is either technically impossible or economically inefficient.
Uniflex said it has successfully developed and now manufactures on an industrial scale packaging, each layer of which consists of one polymer (polyethylene or polypropylene), non-barrier or barrier. This packaging retains all the usual functions of a multicomponent structure, but is also recyclable.