Benvic Helps Film Packaging Move to Natural Solutions
The Benvic Group has recently launched a range of biopolymers that have been designed to improve the environmental performance of the plastic films sector.
Nowhere does the environment impact more on plastics today than in the field of packaging. The key manufacturing processes here are thermo or vacuum forming, blow moulding and blown film.
The Benvic Group has recently launched a range of biopolymers that have been designed to improve the environmental performance of the plastic films sector.
Titled Plantura, Benvic’s biopolymer grades are available in compostable and durable versions: they can be deployed across various packaging applications, both consumer and industrial.
The company believes that the ‘sky is the limit’ for the new film grades and that Benvic is committing significant R&D resources to Plantura in the coming years in order to help ensure its success in the marketplace.
The Benvic team has identified three main positives in the introduction of its Plantura grades into the film sector:
The first factor is aesthetic – appearance and smell. Although perhaps a subtle point, Benvic Plantura solutions are starch-free and odourless and the material grades can also be provided in translucent and transparent versions.
Secondly, Benvic has ensured that Plantura meets all necessary legislative requirements and specifications, particularly for food packaging. Plantura ticks all the environmental boxes when it comes to issues of disposability, food contact and performance at frozen temperatures.
The third factor concerns the mechanical performance of Plantura grades, those that are more orientated to industrial or engineered films. Benvic is developing various grades offering low elongation and excellent stiffness up to 1100 MPa to manage heavy-duty applications.
Benvic has systematically worked through all of these factors precisely to ensure a sustainable future for the materials and to meet major customer needs for performance, aesthetics and cost-effectiveness.
Above all, Plantura has been designed as a fundamentally practical choice for producers of film packaging. Benvic’s polymer portfolio is now also sufficiently wide to enable us to cross-fertilise Plantura for different uses. One example is the inclusion of the company’s bacteriostatic solution Plastisafe as a Plantura additive – creating a unique biopolymer film with bacteriostatic benefits.
Compostability – domestic and industrial – presents an ever-changing picture around the world.
Plantura is currently gaining market share in the industrial and commercial sectors. However, consumer compostability is still in flux when it comes to standards and legislation. Nonetheless, Benvic R&D is developing a Plantura grade that will be ready for this market and will launch at the K exhibition in October 2022.
The Plantura plastics bags of the future are likely to be initially popular since their compostability is certainly appealing in environmental terms – allowing a complete degradation after a certain period of time. However, the trade-off is a downgrade of mechanical and structural performance, and so the market may eventually take a period to decide where the Plantura niche belongs.
Benvic R&D has made the Plantura polymer resins to be easily processable and at a competitive cost in order to optimise productivity and lower the cost of ownership.
For more information on Benvic’s Plantura range, visit www.planturabiopolymer.com/en/.
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