Constantia Flexibles counts on mono films
Alexander Baumgartner, CEO of Constantia Flexibles Holding GmbH, looks at the market conditions in the plastics market before opening the new plant in Ahmedabad, India. Constantia Flexibles is one of the largest manufacturers of plastic films. In the new constitute in Bharat, Constantia Flexibles will only produce recyclable packaging films. Susanne Blueml conducted this interview on 27 August 2022 in Vienna.
Susanne Blueml: What is the strategy backside your activities in India?
Alexander Baumgartner: We demand something new because the packaging industry has a trouble. So far, it has served customer needs, such as: 'The print paradigm has to be a niggling more glossy.' And so we applied a layer of varnish, and information technology became glossier. The next client said – 'The biscuits I pack in there are no longer crispy after six months, and then I demand a better water vapor bulwark.' Permit'southward add another layer of some other great plastic! And the story went as far as to bring 7-, 8-, 10-, 13-layer plastics onto the marketplace today. Everything that the consumer loves or the make manufacturers recommend to the consumer. What is the consequence? Everything we produce is no longer recyclable because we can no longer separate the layers that we then brilliantly technically brought together, at least in an economic way.
SB: Merely why a institute in India – isn't that rather an industrialized state problem?
AB: If y'all drive through India, you will see rubbish on the left and correct side of the route. And if you have a close wait at the garbage, information technology'due south not newspaper, it's non paper-thin, it'southward not glass, and information technology's not aluminum. It's just plastic. Why? Considering fifty-fifty the poorest of the poor would collect the cardboard, the glass, the aluminum. It is a source of income for them; it has a value. If they collect plastic, they get nil because it is worthless. And this is our dilemma – we produce something that is worthless even for the poorest. Even though we have taken a resource from the globe, even though the product is lite, with great properties, we leave information technology in that location, dump it, or whatever.
SB: But in the long run information technology can't become on that style . . .
AB: Exactly. Consumers and politicians no longer take the fact that a production is produced with bang-up use of resources, capital letter, and labor – and that's it. Every bit a visitor, we have a trouble here, but also an opportunity.
SB: But films take to guarantee specific properties?
AB: The barrier properties are indispensable, whether information technology is water vapor, UV protection, oxygen, or light. So that the consumer who buys the production does not take to eat information technology after 24 hours, but may have one, two, three, or four weeks. The contents must remain edible, taste good, look expert, and smell skilful. On the other paw, I need packaging that I can reuse. We are a company that believes in recycling – something that has been removed from the ground should be used as frequently every bit possible. And to follow this principle, we take to develop recyclable products, i.due east., monomaterials. They are manufactured on a single plastic basis, in our case polyethylene, and tin can, therefore, be returned to any polyethylene recycling process. What was rice packaging today could be a garbage bag tomorrow, a park bench, or a car part.
SB: Practise you feel driven by customers or politics?
AB: By both. You can't imagine how oft I'yard approached at dinner with friends or neighbors – "What are y'all doing, aren't you ashamed of yourself?" Politicians have increased the pressure here and thus also the force per unit area on our customers. That made us all move faster.
SB: Especially in Europe?
AB: Not at all. We have ix plants in Bharat. In some states, there are obligations imposed past the authorities that the same amount that we produce each twelvemonth must be recovered through collection companies.
SB: What infrastructure did you have to create?
AB: Republic of india is a very dynamic country. Almost overnight, such collection and recycling companies sprung upward like mushrooms and offered their services. These companies would non take existed without the legislator. And then politics plays the main role.
SB: Which decision-making processes in your company preceded the changeover?
AB: To exist honest, I didn't accept to convince my shareholders for long. It's virtually bringing something completely new to the market place and giving it a certain competitive border for some fourth dimension. This is of interest to every shareholder.
SB: Simply then I volition buy a nice recyclable film and create some other CO2 footprint in some other place?
AB: That'due south not the goal, that's the transitional solution. We opted for India because nosotros believed the politicians there were capable of exerting pressure level on the recycling economy. Simply nosotros see a market for this product family well across India. We as well accept plans for Europe in the drawer. We can export the India model chop-chop.
SB: Tin you lot ensure that your recyclable materials can exercise everything that existing materials tin practise?
AB: We can embrace almost annihilation. Merely the real question is – How highly specified exercise products accept to be? An example from a major brand manufacturer – He liked our monomaterial approach and wanted to test information technology. The previous packaging was over-specified in terms of durability, so we were able to convince the customer's marketing department to reduce the requirements in this respect somewhat because the product is always consumed inside a much shorter fourth dimension. And so the customer started to optimize the supply chain and warehouse range, duration, and inventory levels. Thanks to this discussion, film properties are also chosen into question, some of which are exaggerated, over-specified, and really no longer necessary from today's point of view.
SB: You already have a certain recyclable share in your products – aren't you cannibalizing your ain market?
AB: We encounter it this fashion – If we don't do it, someone else volition practice it, so we'd rather exercise it ourselves.
SB: And then is the current packaging world an overkill?
AB: I'one thousand against generalization. Simply like you lot'll never hear from me, the paper is bad or something. There are products that are very well and properly packaged in material A or B. Yous won't get a blood transfusion from a jute bag in the hospital, so the plastic bag is the meliorate option.
SB: The use of monomaterials results in recyclable materials. Do you also apply recyclate?
AB: Yes, we already use recyclate for certain applications in the detergent sector. The material that we utilize today for our EcoLam family, however, is pure virgin textile or post-industrial waste. Not waste product from consumers – that would be the adjacent step for us. The side by side simply one stride would be to innovate material from the collected polyethylene fractions into the production procedure.
SB: How far are you with your activities in India?
AB: Nosotros are in the market launch stage. The extruder has been turning for two or three weeks, and we are printing. The whole chain has only been in operation for a few weeks. We are currently providing industrial quantities to our customers and so that they can fill up, do their transport and storage tests, and and then on. This means that we will have the showtime results at the end of September. This will proceed until the end of the year. Then comes the moment of truth, and we have to face the consequences – in virtually cases, our solutions will be able to meet the high demands on the packaging. If a customer and then – as in the example before – makes a compromise in special cases because he likes the story, it is a success for all of the states.
SB: But at that place is however one problem…
AB: The simply obstacle we withal have today is nutrient contact products. In that location nosotros do not nevertheless have the approving to use recycled cloth. Only the technology will keep to develop there as well. In the current phase, it is not essential since we have so many non-food applications.
SB: Then, what is the side by side step?
AB: If we are beyond the learning bend of the side by side three months and have feedback from all customers, and so it will exist the adjacent step to make up one's mind where recyclate can exist used. Yous can't just propagate recycling management; you also have to pursue it actively.
SB: Practise you besides want to invest in recycling structures beyond these certificates, which you are at present acquiring in India? To possibly ensure a higher quality of the recyclable material?
AB: I don't think that nosotros, as a company, take the resource to build upwardly recycling structures of a necessary size seriously. I am bold that an industry of its ain will increasingly come together and notice itself. Nosotros would then buy from these collectors, who would then become suppliers.
SB: If you are now going on with mono cloth on PE-ground, a bike would be easier to represent. The example of a PET bottle shows it. The footstep for the PE film might not be so big?
AB: I remember in that location's one component missing from your equation, and that'south the drove purity. With PET, you take reward of the fact that it is a canteen. So a PET bottle is something that the human being, the average consumer, recognizes. It is either a drinking glass bottle or a PET bottle. So beingness in front of ii collecting bins and says, is it a PET bottle or is it a glass bottle? In that location I have a relatively clear, almost pure stream. Merely I don't retrieve you lot can forcefulness the consumer to distinguish green squares or dark-green circles or blue squares on the dorsum of the label. Information technology makes sense to collect glass, aluminum, or paper separately. Then yous can separate the organic waste matter, so I accept residue plastic.
In other words, in my recycling streams, I have to manage to separate the PE Group from the PET Group, from recyclable materials containing nylon, and so on. And these are techniques that the recycling industry has mastered. They are non more expensive. These are relatively uncomplicated methods used in physics.
Nosotros have also looked in item at technologies for separating the individual layers in multilayers. And every bit I said at the get-go, they be. It is technically possible. But the endeavour – energy and costs and time – is still asymmetric from today's signal of view. Yous have to bet on something in life: We believe in the monomaterial solution, that information technology is more than realistic, more than understandable for the market, compared to a technically and chemically complex separation of multi-layer systems.
SB: With the keyword recyclable, the average consumer thinks that the bottle becomes a bottle, and the pic becomes a film again. The term 'recyclable' is a very hard term that evokes false associations. How tin can you bargain with this, and how do your customers do information technology?
AB: Then nosotros can't really encounter it. I don't necessarily find the topic of downcycling bad per se. Even if I downcycle, I offering a second apply, a second life for a production where until yesterday, fresh goods were used. When I downcycle it, at that place'south still a positive contribution to the whole in the pyramid. Is and so in the side by side circular of recycling the production a chip less valuable? Hardly. Until yesterday we threw information technology away. The paper industry has shown very successfully how to handle it, and that is exactly what we volition do.
SB: With this plant in India, you are now initially serving pilot customers in India as well?
AB: Right. In recent months, nosotros accept conducted several trials with selected customers, ranging from multinational corporations to local players, to ensure that our products meet the loftier requirements of our customers. These airplane pilot projects were very successful in both the hygiene and food sectors. Smaller manufacturers are also interested in our Ecolam products and play a pioneering role in some cases.
SB: Mr. Baumgartner, thank you for the interview.
Susanne Blueml, packaging journalist led the interview, in the Constantia headquarter in Vienna. Offset published in a shorter form in the September 2022 issue of VerpackungsRundschau in a shorter grade, it is published here with the permission of the author. The article was starting time published in the November 2022 issue of Packaging Southern asia.
Source: https://packagingsouthasia.com/type-of-packaging/flexible-packaging/constantia-counts-on-monofilms/
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