Veltins pours recyclability into beer packs with Sappi’s Fusion Topliner fiber material

15 Dec 2020 --- German brewing company Veltins is adopting Sappi’s Fusion Topliner virgin fiber material for its 12 bottle packs, providing an environmentally and economically sustainable solution to the increasingly competitive beer market. 

With fewer people buying beer, brewers are seeking ways to entice consumers to continue selecting their brands in a shrinking market place.

Sappi, a South Africa-based functional paper packaging specialist, developed Fusion Topliner as an evolved form of the company’s previous Topliner material. It is made from pure virgin fibers and features a front side double-coated Topliner with functional reverse side coating.

Knappe & Lehbrink, a German design company responsible for Veltin’s new beer packs, details Sappi’s improvements. 

“We compared Fusion Topliner with the previously used Topliner paper. Sappi’s Fusion Topliner achieves the same material strength with a grammage of 180 g/m2 as a 230 g/m2 GD2,” says Jochen Rudat, project manager at Knappe and Lehbrink. 

“In other words, the customer saves between 25 and 30 percent grammage compared to recycled grades. This means increased efficiency in terms of energy and space, resulting in significant cost savings and packaging weight reduction.”

Click to EnlargeSappi’s Fusion Topliner material provides increased durability and lowered weight compared with market alternatives, says the company.Guaranteeing load-bearing safety
The creation of the packaging solution by Knappe & Lehbrink for the 12 packs of 0.33 L bottles began with the carton material’s technical design. 

The main challenge, says the company, was creating corrugated board packaging offering reliable load-bearing safety and resilience even in refrigerators’ damp, cold environment. 

This challenge put the developers in the research laboratory under considerable pressure for some time, says Rudat. 

He asserts that a critical quality of the material is its elasticity, which is an essential element of the new design. 

“Thanks to its optimized fiber structure, the material remains perfect even after folding, and folded edges no longer tear.”

“In comparison to conventional GD liners, Fusion Topliner also offers impressive low glue absorption and outstanding print results,” he continues. 

Brewers boost circular economy 
Veltin’s new packaging joins an array of other developments in beer packaging aimed at improving environmental sustainability standards. 

German tech giant Siemens recently partnered with British packaging manufacturer T Freemantle to create specialized cans and carton board packs for the craft beer industry. 

Dutch beer brewer Grolsch also began using Smurfit Kappa’s paper-based TopClip for its multi-pack cans. Renewable, recyclable and biodegradable, the TopClip will save Grolsch an estimated 100,000 kg of plastic annually.

Since last year, Coca Cola has been seeking to eliminate plastic from its canned beverages packaging using Graphic Packaging International’s KeelClip minimalist paperboard multipacks. 

Edited by Louis Gore-Langton

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