Plastic materials are outstanding for packaging purposes - they are excellent barriers and can easily be moulded into advanced shapes. There is only one drawback - plastic materials are fossil. Our use of coal, oil, and natural gas has been the very driver of climate change since the start of the Industrial Revolution that started in 1760.
Today, there is a strong movement within the packaging industry to find alternative materials that have led to extended use and development of fibre-based packaging solutions. Paper-based trays are replacing plastic trays for packaged food. Historically, many square paperboard boxes have had inner trays to keep parts of the packaged goods in place. Over the last years, we have seen many solutions where fibre-based materials have replaced the material in such trays.
This development has led to a demand for shapes of paper-based materials that have been impossible to produce in the traditional converting process for paperboard packaging. Now, techniques like the wet and dry moulding of fibre-based materials are used for the above-mentioned trays in food packaging and other areas.
Holmen Iggesund is actively working on tray forming, wet and dry moulding to be able to offer our customers non-fossil or low-fossil solutions.