The
highly innovative technical team at Ultimate Packaging believes it
has produced a world first environmentally-friendly product as part
of a joint venture with Innovia Films and Sun Chemical. Staff at the
North East Lincolnshire-based company believe that Ultigreen™ is the
first ever truly biodegradable and home compostable printed laminate
for the food industry.
Using
hybrid biodegradable inks, Ultimate Packaging has reverse-printed
Natureflex™ and laminated the material using a unique biodegradable
adhesive to metallised Natureflex™. The Grimsby-based company has
already established itself as one of the UK’s flexographic print
suppliers to the food industry, but the experienced team continue to
focus on finding innovative new solutions for its customers.
Ultimate Packaging Technical Manager, Derek Gibson, explains “Until
now, only a small coverage of standard inks could be used to enable
products to pass the EN13432 standard and to be rated as
biodegradable. The new Sun Chemical hybrid inks allow total print
coverage on food packs and the biodegradable adhesive applied to
bond these two Innovia materials means that this product can be
classed as being made from totally biodegradable components.
“We
selected a promotional tea design to prove that the newly developed
biodegradable inks and adhesive were compatible and then printed the
Ultigreen™ product on our recently commissioned Soma Imperia 10
colour press.”
The
new product development team at Ultimate Packaging is now working on
further products using the new ink and adhesive technology to bring
additional completely biodegradable and home compostable flexible
films to their food industry customers.
“This
really is an exciting development for us and we believe that it has
enormous potential,” says Chris Tonge, Ultimate Packaging Sales and
Marketing Director. “It is only the first of several new products
that will set our family-run business apart from our competitors.”