Solutions: Next Generation NatureFlex/Futamura

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Biodegradable packaging and filter materials were a prominent theme at this year’s COTECA exhibition in Hamburg, with well over a dozen companies showcasing their respective products. But Futamura UK, a member of Japan’s Futamura Group, certainly stood out thanks to its revolutionary new packaging film, NatureFlex.

According to the company’s market development manager Claire McKeown, the only recently launched material is already used by a number of coffee and tea brands, either on its own or as an aroma-sealing inner liner laminated with paper. It serves as an excellent oxygen barrier (0% r.H.: 1 at 230 C), giving complete aroma protection and is also resistant to fats.

STiR's Solutions Series

Furthermore, the material, produced from FSC and PEFC-certified bio-cellulose under Futamura’s patented process, serves as a proven functional barrier against mineral oil migration for at least five years. But its truly outstanding property is its tested biodegradability and home compostability. Given the right environmental conditions (warm and wet), NatureFlex only takes weeks to fully degrade on the backyard compost heap where other purported biodegradables may take months if not years. And as ocean pollution becomes an increasingly serious global problem, Futamura UK is currently in the process to carry out tests for the marine biodegradability of NatureFlex.

Fully printable, the material’s environmental friendliness would of course fly straight out the window if conventional inks were deployed that may not easily biodegrade, although when used on food packaging they are generally required to be non-toxic. Futamura recognized that issue and apparently has entered into a collaboration with German packaging company, L.F.C. Nocke, the latter sharing a booth with the former at COTECA. Nocke’s managing director Carsten Haaks divulged to STiR at the show that his company exclusively deployed water or ethanol-based inks on NatureFlex substrates whose pigments simply dissolve naturally when composted, leaving behind no pollutants.

The intriguing combination of a fully compostable packaging material paired with fully degradable printing inks drew a lot of interest from visiting industry professionals at the show, Haaks said.

- Thomas Schmid