Dairy Processing - January/February 2022 - 40

PACKAGING
also added post-consumer and recycled materials to enhance
polymer material supply-chain options and developed closureto-bottle
tethering to keep the cap with the bottle throughout
its entire market life.
Watson said BERICAP's current and future innovations in
dairy closures will exceed these sustainability requirements,
and the company anticipates using more designs based on
lightweight and post-consumer materials as these options
continue to increase in availability over the next three to
five years.
Melanie Montplaisir, marketing manager for Montrealbased
TC Transcontinental, said the challenge in flexible
packaging is to simplify structures and move toward
mono-material packaging. She said when designing packaging
that includes caps and closures, the company needs to make
sure materials are used from similar or identical polymer
grades so the entire package can be recycled together.
To that end, she said TC Transcontinental has developed
a task force of sustainability experts that work with labs
and technologies to identify opportunities in sustainable
solutions and design optimized packaging for performance
and cost. She said the many tests, instruments and technology
available to their team have provided enhanced product
development and knowledge through the entire process
of flexible packaging design. In turn, this has resulted in
the development of innovative films for sustainability or
e-commerce.
Clover Sonoma
first to offer PCR
gallon jug
Dairy products manufactured by Clover Sonoma,
Petaluma, Calif., are the first to offer a postconsumer
recycled (PCR) gallon milk jug.
Starting with 30% PCR content in its organic gallon
milk line, the company has committed to increasing
the PCR content and extending PCR content use
across all Clover Sonoma gallon milk jugs by 2025.
Using PCR content in plastic packaging creates
a closed loop system for recycling plastic gallon
milk jugs and ensures plastic is neither created nor
destroyed but re-used.
" Clover Sonoma is willing to make an investment
for the future, " said Bob Carroll, vice president of
business development, California Milk Advisory
Board (CMAB), Tracy, Calif. " Consumer sentiment
towards plastic is negative. So this is the right
thing to do. "
Mr. Carroll cited a 2021 perceptions study
conducted by a dairy industry coalition that
showed while 70% of California consumers said
recyclability is important to them, nearly half
found the milk jug difficult to recycle and 32% of
those consumers reported they didn't trust it will
be recycled.
" Two-thirds of plastic milk jugs wind up in
landfills and it takes a thousand or so years to
break down, " Mr. Carroll said. " As an industry
leader, Clover Sonoma wanted to do its part. "
- Donna Berry
According to Montplaisir, the main challenge the
company is experiencing in that process is how the package
will perform on the customer's equipment, and to help the
company has four different labs they use to analyze and
simulate real-life use of packaging, perform production-scale
customer prototypes, and complete in-house recyclability and
composability assessment.
IMPROVING FORM AND FUNCTION
In another innovation, Indianapolis-based Closures Systems
International (CSI) has introduced the 38D-KF closure this
past year that includes a half-moon style foil liner, which
allows for dual tamper evidence and a reinforced seal on
shelves. It is designed to work with HDPE and PET bottles
and is commercially available for applications in liquid dairy
and non-carbonated markets, including milks and juices.
These closures also can incorporate PolyCycle, CSI's postconsumer
recycled HDPE resin that is sourced from recycled
milk and beverage containers, allowing the cap to be sourced
with up to 100% post-consumer recycled HDPE resin.
" Our teams apply innovation and ... lean manufacturing
to help customers maximize profits by enhancing the
marketability of their brands while optimizing total cost of
operations, " said Clint Rush, marketing director for CSI. " In
part, those approaches include optimizing closure design,
minimizing closure weight, increased machine output, shared
efficiency gains, reduced waste and improved recyclability. "
Another innovation from CSI is a twist-and-flip tethered
closure, which is designed to meet the needs of evolving
legislation in the beverage industry while also delivering
both the brand owner and the consumer value, Rush said.
The closure increases recyclability by allowing it to stay
attached to the bottle throughout the product's lifecycle,
and this helps keep plastics in the circular economy and
out of the waste stream. These tethered closures are also
dimensionally interchangeable with existing closures as a
40 JAN-FEB 2022 | DAIRYPROCESSING.COM
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