SABIC and Gualapack create advanced-recycled baby food cap for Ella’s Kitchen

27 Jan 2022 --- Sabic, Gualapack and Ella’s Kitchen are joint-launching a baby food cap made from advanced recycled plastics. Over 3.5 million of Ella’s Kitchen’s Organic Strawberries and Apples pouches will feature this new cap, hitting UK shelves this month.

The recycled content in the cap is created using certified circular polymers from SABIC’s Trucircle portfolio. The material derives from recycled plastics from post-consumer waste that would otherwise typically be destined for incineration or landfill.

The chemical giant’s resins are then used by Gualapack – a market leader in spouted pouches for the baby food segment and supplier to Ella’s Kitchen – to produce the cap.

PackagingInsights recently explored how baby and toddler foods have come under increased focus and scrutiny as COVID-19 lockdown restrictions and health worries occupy consumer concerns.

A baby food category first
Ella’s Kitchen will become the first company in the baby food category to use certified circular polymers from SABIC’s Trucircle portfolio.

The launch boosts Ella’s Kitchen’s broader commitment to lower its packaging’s environmental impact by making it “widely recyclable” by 2024.

“We understand that this [launch] will not solve the recyclability question of our packaging, but hope it will demonstrate our continued commitment to creating change and the opportunity chemical recycling can play to create food contact recycled content for packaging,” comments Chris Jenkins, sustainability and corporate communications at Ella’s Kitchen.

Ella’s Kitchen is the first company in the baby food category to use certified circular polymers from SABIC’s Trucircle portfolio.“We hope that industry continues to focus and invest in advanced recycling to increase the availability of the material, which is needed to unlock lasting change.”

According to Rabobank, advanced recycling continued to flourish in 2021, despite criticism from NGOs and media reports challenging the cost-effectiveness and environmental performance of these technologies.

Food-grade recyclate
SABIC’s Trucircle portfolio spans a range of products and services, including design for recyclability, mechanically-recycled products, certified-circular products from used plastic feedstock recycling, certified renewables products from bio-based feedstock and closed-loop initiatives to recycle plastic back into high-quality applications.

Mars Petcare recently launched chemically-recycled cat food pouches from SABIC’s using chemical recycling technologies. Last year, the chemicals company also announced the “world’s first” circular polymers from advanced recycled ocean-bound plastics.

SABIC’s certified circular polymers are produced via the advanced recycling of mixed and used plastic that could otherwise be destined for incineration or landfill. Through a process called pyrolysis, difficult-to-recycle used plastic is broken down into its chemical building blocks to produce pyrolysis oil.

The company uses this oil as feedstock to create certified circular polymers with the same properties as virgin material.

The circular polymers are certified under the International Sustainability and Carbon Certification Plus scheme following a mass balance approach. This widely recognized international certification verifies that the mass balance accounting follows predefined and transparent rules. Additionally, it provides traceability along the supply chain, from the feedstock to the final product.

“Using advanced recycling technology, we produce materials for high-quality, food-grade packaging which can be upcycled over and over again. This new collaboration with Ella’s Kitchen is beneficial to the ecosystem of food packaging and is another significant step toward a circular economy for used plastics,” says Abdullah Al-Otaibi, ETP & Market Solution General Manager at SABIC.

By Joshua Poole

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