Plastipak is driven to develop circular solutions that protect the environment and meet its customers’ exacting standards for sustainability and performance. Over the past year, the company has been actively involved in evaluating the application of Avantium’s PEF (polyethylene furanoate), a 100% plant-based, high-performance polymer that can be recycled in existing PET (polyethylene terephthalate) recycling streams. PEF is for instance included in the Critical Guidance Protocol from the Association of Plastic Recyclers (APR), one of the most universally accepted measures for assessing recyclability in plastic packaging design.
Plastipak has successfully demonstrated the enhanced performance of PEF in monolayer and multilayer bottle applications. PEF is distinguished by its superior barrier properties, which extend the shelf life of food and beverages, its higher mechanical strength that allows for less material, and its lower processing temperature that reduces energy consumption compared to traditional plastics derived from fossil resources. PEF’s unique characteristics make it an ideal monolayer packaging material and also provide benefits when used in conjunction with PET (polyethylene terephthalate). In multilayer PET packages, PEF serves as an effective barrier layer to ensure product shelf life when a single PET layer is insufficient.
