It is not a secret that carton packaging of juices and milk is extremely poorly recyclable due to their multi-layering and differences in the structure of the layers. And in the near future, this threatens to complicate the life of European manufacturers seriously. However, the UK company Zotefoams seems to be ready to provide a complete alternative to barrier cartons.

Quite recently, they unveiled their ReZorce, a recyclable HDPE barrier packaging for food and beverages. This is high density polyethylene with small additives that do not affect its further processing. It is widely used in many packaging such as milk bottles.

However, Zotefoams completely changed the structure of the material used in order to be able to match ReZorce with cardboard packaging in terms of properties. Instead of a monolayer, they use a multi-layer foam structure of plastic, which provides the desired barrier properties. And it is this structure that allows the plastic to bend and shape it into the desired shape. However, it still remains fully recyclable plastic. Moreover, after processing, it can also be used to produce the same packaging.

One of the difficulties that stood on the way of the developers was the specifics of the new surface - its roughness, similar to the roughness of an orange peel, and making it extremely difficult to print on it. But this problem was practically eliminated - the technology is still at the development stage, but the issue will be finally resolved within the next few months. After that the stage of project commercialization will begin.

Materials from sites zotefoams.com and packagingeurope.com were used.