SABIC, Mars Petcare and Huhtamaki have announced that their successful collaboration in pet food packaging using certified circular polypropylene (PP) from SABIC’s TRUCIRCLE™ portfolio has taken the next step and will be used for innovative packaging solutions for the leading cat food SHEBA® brand. Mars Petcare, as part of Mars, Incorporated, a family-owned business with more than a century of history, has adopted a flexible film structure with SABIC® PP BCT18F impact copolymer for retort pouches that are used in the packaging of wet pet food products for SHEBA®. The multi-layer film is manufactured by Huhtamaki, a key global supplier of sustainable packaging solutions to customers around the world.
“We are very pleased about the ongoing strategic efforts with Mars and Huhtamaki,” states Lada Kurelec, General Manager PP, PET, PS, PVC, PU & Elastomers Businesses for Petrochemicals at SABIC. “The transformation of the industry towards a circular economy requires unprecedented innovation and intensive collaboration across the value chain. Together, we have set another milestone on this exciting journey.”
“We are pleased to share the progress in our sustainable pet food packaging journey. Over the past year, we have been closely working with SABIC and Huhtamaki, continually testing-and-learning and scaling up the recycled plastic content in our petfood packs. The fact that we are now able to introduce recycled content into our SHEBA® pouches helps us accelerate our journey to achieve 30% average recycled content in our plastic packaging and to reduce by 25% our use of virgin plastic” says Barry Parkin, Chief Procurement and Sustainability Officer at Mars, Incorporated.
In November 2020, Mars, Incorporated had announced its ambition to introduce food safe recycled content polypropylene into its pet food packaging to do its part in building a circular economy where no packaging becomes waste. In partnership with SABIC and Huhtamaki, the goal was to develop and deploy recycled plastic in pet food brands.
Marco Hilty, President of Huhtamaki’s Flexible Packaging business segment said: “We are fully committed to partnering with global leaders to develop solutions which drive the transition to a circular economy. We are proud to work with Mars and SABIC on a concrete solution which can be used globally. Successfully processing recycled polymers into high-quality, easy tear films for wet retort packaging at an industrial scale is a significant milestone in delivering on our ambition to have more than 80% of our raw materials renewable or recycled. This is important for consumers and in line with our ambitious 2030 strategy.”
