Innovations are useful when they simplify complexity. Recycling packages with different layers of different materials is complex and often the end user does not know how to dispose of them. Unfortunately, the alternative is only one: throw the wrapper into the undifferentiated, since the polylaminates are not recyclable.

This is why more and more companies in the food sector (but also in the pharmaceutical, cosmetic, etc.) decide to use more environmentally friendly solutions, but at the same time allow an ideal protective barrier in terms of shelf-life and safety.

This is the case, for example, of high barrier, metalized PET. PET is a thermoplastic resin suitable for food contact that has until now been used to make bottles and rigid packaging. Now a market trend, more and more attentive to the recyclability of packaging, has allowed the diffusion of the metalized pet in a flexible format.

These new “aluminum free” packaging allow to introduce various innovations in the sector:

First innovation: this special PET combines the flexibility of plastic with the insulation of aluminum, but without using two different materials.

Second innovation: the processing of high barrier metallic PET impacts very little on the environment and its recycling is effective. The material that is processed is only one (and not two as in the case of traditional packaging) and this simplifies all processes, both in design and construction and recycling.

Third innovation: high barrier metalized PET offers an oxygen barrier that allows molecules to be identified and blocked. In this way, a barrier is created with the external atmosphere comparable only to the laminated barrier materials (laminated PET or other composites).