Mars and Huhtamaki join SABIC’s TRUCIRCLE™ initiative for pet food packaging based on certified circular polypropylene

SITTARD, THE NETHERLANDS, November 4, 2020 - SABIC, a global leader in the chemical industry, today announced that biaxially oriented polypropylene (BOPP) film based on the company’s certified circular PP from feedstock recycling of used plastics will be introduced in primary pet food brand packaging by Mars, Incorporated, a global leader in confectionery, food, and pet food products. The BOPP film structures are manufactured by Huhtamaki, a key supplier of sustainable packaging solutions to customers around the world. The joint initiative will help the partners implement their ambitious targets of reducing the volume of fossil-sourced plastics and accelerate the transition to a more circular plastics economy.

“The littering of plastic packaging on our land and oceans is unacceptable, and at Mars we’re committed to addressing this problem,” says Barry Parkin, Chief Procurement and Sustainability Officer at Mars, Incorporated. “To do this, we need to reduce packaging we don’t need, redesign the remaining packaging to become circular, and invest to close the loop and help scale up recycling systems. Through our partnership with Huhtamaki and SABIC, we will test-and-learn, progressively increase the recycled plastic content in our packs, and ultimately help drive circular packaging systems.”

Following a successful pilot phase in 2020, Mars will incorporate certified circular PP polymer from SABIC’s TRUCIRCLE™ portfolio in the primary packaging of some of its popular pet food brands. The certified circular PP food-grade material is produced through the feedstock recycling of low quality, used mixed plastic that could otherwise be destined for incineration or landfill. It takes difficult to recycle used plastic back to the molecular level through a process called pyrolysis. This technology breaks down used plastic by heating it at a very high temperature in an oxygen-free environment, producing pyrolysis oil. SABIC uses pyrolysis oil coming from UK-based Plastic Energy’s proprietary advanced recycling technology that enters the production chain just like fossil-based feedstock to deliver new materials that can address strict quality requirements, such as certain hygiene standards for food packaging. The resulting PP polymer is verified and authenticated under the International Sustainability and Carbon Certification (ISCC PLUS) scheme, which uses a mass balance approach. SABIC’s certified circular products from our TRUCIRCLE portfolio offer a carbon footprint reduction of 2kgs of CO2 for every kilogram of polymer produced based on the diversion of post-consumer used plastic from incineration.

“Our strategic partnership with Mars and SABIC is a great example of how collaboration can result in breakthroughs that deliver significant progress in our journey to designing 100 percent of our products to be recyclable, compostable or reusable by 2030,” states Charles Héaulmé, President and CEO of Huhtamaki: “We are fully committed to playing our part in building a circular economy across the value chain and partnering with others to do so. Our new flexible BOPP packaging structure with certified recycled food-grade PP polymer is an important milestone on our journey towards achieving that more than 80 percent of the raw materials we use will be either renewable or recycled.”

Likewise, while Mars is piloting the use of SABIC recycled content in Europe in 2020, the company plans to increase volumes used in 2021 with ambitions to other brands. Mars sees this as a major step in the company’s sustainability strategy, which is targeting the use of 30 percent recycled content across their packaging portfolio and a 25 percent reduction of virgin plastic by 2025.

“This successful collaboration with Mars and Huhtamaki reflects the partners’ willingness and shared pioneering spirit for effective change in the industry towards a truly circular plastics economy,” adds Sergi Monros, Vice President of Performance Polymers & Industry Solutions for Petrochemicals at SABIC. “At SABIC, we are determined to develop new solutions that meet our customers’ growing demands for more sustainable polymers. Only through partnerships such as these can we prove the commercial viable and sustainable contribution of advanced recycling processes to help confront the challenges our society is facing today.”

With its TRUCIRCLE portfolio, SABIC is capturing great value from sources like animal-free bio-based feedstock and post-consumer recycle, which have traditionally been ignored or discarded. The ISCC PLUS accredited materials offer drop-in solutions for replacing fossil-based plastics in the packaging industry without compromising product purity and food safety. Moreover, BOPP film using certified circular PP polymer from SABIC offers an excellent balance of stiffness and toughness as well as barrier and hot-fill properties. It can be used for a wide range of flexible applications, from labels and tape to packaging pouches and bags in areas such as confectionery, snacks, baked goods, dried fruits, pasta, fresh food, and pet care products.

SABIC’s TRUCIRCLE offering spans from design for recyclability services and mechanically recycled materials to certified circular products from feedstock recycling of used plastics as well as certified renewable polymers from bio-based feedstock. Third-party ISCC PLUS certification ensures that the mass balance accounting of the company’s circular polymer products follows predefined and transparent rules. In addition, it provides traceability along the entire supply chain from the feedstock to the final product. Read more here.

Kevin Noels
Marketing Solutions
Box 6
2950 Kapellen
Belgium
Tel: +32 3 31 30 311
E-Mail: info@marketing-solutions.com

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SABIC should be written in every instance in all uppercase.

ABOUT SABIC
SABIC is a global diversified chemicals company, headquartered in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia. SABIC manufactures on a global scale in the Americas, Europe, Middle East and Asia Pacific, making distinctly different kinds of products: chemicals, commodity and high performance plastics, agri-nutrients and metals.

SABIC supports its customers by identifying and developing opportunities in key end-use applications such as construction, medical devices, packaging, agri-nutrients, electrical and electronics, transportation and clean energy. Production in 2019 was 72.6 million metric tons.

SABIC has more than 33,000 employees worldwide and operates in around 50 countries. Fostering innovation and a spirit of ingenuity, SABIC has 12,540 global patent filings, and has significant research resources with innovation hubs in five key geographies – USA, Europe, Middle East, South Asia and North Asia.

ABOUT MARS
For more than a century, Mars, Incorporated has been driven by the belief that the world we want tomorrow starts with how we do business today. This idea is at the center of who we have always been as a global, family-owned business. Today, Mars is transforming, innovating and evolving in ways that affirm our commitment to making a positive impact on the world around us.

Across our diverse and expanding portfolio of confectionery, food, and petcare products and services, we employ 130,000 dedicated Associates who are all moving in the same direction: forward. With $40 billion in annual sales, we produce some of the world’s best-loved brands including DOVE®, EXTRA®, M&M’s®, MILKY WAY®, SNICKERS®, TWIX®, ORBIT®, PEDIGREE®, ROYAL CANIN®, SKITTLES®, BEN’S ORIGINAL™, WHISKAS®, COCOAVIA®, and 5™; and take care of half of the world’s pets through our nutrition, health and services businesses, including AniCura, Banfield Pet Hospitals™, BluePearl®, Linnaeus, and VCA™.

We know we can only be truly successful if our partners and the communities in which we operate prosper as well. The Mars Five Principles – Quality, Responsibility, Mutuality, Efficiency and Freedom – inspire our Associates to take action every day to help create a world tomorrow in which the planet, its people and pets can thrive.
The Mars Compass, inspired by the Economics of Mutuality, is used to measure the company’s progress in service of its purpose; The world we want tomorrow starts with how we do business today.

For more information about Mars, please visit www.mars.com. Join us on Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Instagram and YouTube.

ABOUT HUHTAMAKI
Huhtamaki is a key global provider of sustainable packaging solutions for consumers around the world, enabling wellbeing and convenience. Our innovative products protect on-the-go and on-the-shelf food and beverages, ensuring hygiene and safety, and help prevent food waste. We embed sustainability in everything we do. We are committed to achieving carbon neutral production and designing all our products to be recyclable, compostable or reusable by 2030.

We are a participant in the UN Global Compact and as of 2020, we received an MSCI ESG Rating of A, on a scale from AAA to CCC. To play our part in managing climate change, we have committed to set science-based targets through the Science Based Targets initiative. Huhtamaki has been awarded the Silver medal by EcoVadis for performance in sustainability.

With 100 years of history and a strong Nordic heritage, we operate in 35 countries and 81 sites around the world. Our values Care Dare Deliver guide our decisions and help our team of 18,600 employees make a difference where it matters. Our 2019 net sales totaled EUR 3.4 billion. Huhtamaki Group is headquartered in Espoo, Finland and our parent company, Huhtamäki Oyj, is listed on Nasdaq Helsinki Ltd. Find out more about how we are protecting food, people and the planet on www.huhtamaki.com.

This release was published on openPR.