Major players in the packaging industry have recognised that they won’t be able to solve the multiple challenges they face by working in silos. We spoke to Francisco Razzolini at Brazilian paperboard producer Klabin, and Carina Rydén Pettersson at Tetra Pak, about the new spirit of collaborative innovation aimed at tackling issues like carbon emissions, use of non-renewable raw materials, and limited recyclability.
Francisco Razzolini says that meeting consumer demand for packaging while reducing environmental impact will require both new products and processes. “Whether we do this by using existing technologies, or by developing new ones, this requires a lot of collaboration between our companies,” says Razzolini, who is Industrial Technology, Innovation, Sustainability and Projects Director at Brazil’s largest producer and exporter of packaging paper. “We need to put our teams together, build trust, confidence and empathy, share experiences, thoughts, ideas and developments.”
And that is exactly what the company is doing, as one of several partners throughout the packaging value chain with which Tetra Pak is collaborating on the packaging solutions of tomorrow.
“Collaboration is an essential part for our success,” agrees Carina Rydén Pettersson, Director Materials Strategic Partnership at Tetra Pak. “We need to stay in business, but at the same time we need to create something that is good for our planet. We see there is a very strong need to go together and to work less on our own.”
Of course, there is nothing new in companies collaborating on new products and solutions. But Rydén Pettersson says that what is different today, in the face of a looming climate crisis, is a new spirit of partnership. “This is quite big change in our company. We now have true partnership where both sides have a great deal of input, we leverage on each other's knowledge, and we are really co-creating in a very positive and healthy way.”
The challenges on which Klabin and Tetra Pak are collaborating include how to replace the aluminium foil that protects against oxygen and light to maintain nutritional value and flavour of packaged food at ambient temperatures – but which has a significant carbon footprint.
“This is a challenge that you cannot solve yourself in one company,” says Rydén Pettersson.
The ultimate goal is liquid packaging board made solely of a single material – paperboard. “We are really close to having a single material that I think we will come in three or four years from now,” says Razzolini.
Rydén Pettersson says that there will not be one big game-changing breakthrough in packaging, but rather a succession of smaller iterations. “We cannot wait until we have the ultimate packaging in our hands. We need to go stepwise once we have what we believe is a minimum viable product to deploy. We will go to the market together with early adopting customers and get feedback throughout the value chain, and continue to evolve and learn.”
This new collaborative mindset, which goes hand in hand with sustainability’s move to the top of the industry’s agenda, shows the progress over the last couple of years, says Rydén Pettersson. “You can see the amount of money the industry is investing into this, and also how it is working together with universities and researchers to find a solution. But we have a long way to go, and I think the coming three years will be critical for getting new solutions out into the market.”
“We have heard the voices of society, the voices of consumers and we are adjusting our process and our developments towards a more sustainable future,” concludes Razzolini.