The packaging is a key element, it allows every product to be transported, bought and sold safely. No doubts about the role of packaging, but, once exhausted its function, once removed the product, whether food or not, to use it, where does the packaging?

Fortunately, even in Italy, the packaging ends, increasingly, in the right place, back to life, form and dignity, through the intelligent recycling. It does not remain inert waste to be disposed of, but also assumes a new utility.

According to the latest estimates, the share of packaging recycling rates reached very encouraging. The 75% of packaging, which can be of wood, plastic, steel or glass, is recycled.

Suffice it to say that, in 2010, were well recovered 8.5 million tonnes of packaging, of a total of 11.4 million tons on the market.

Secondary packaging is now under the magnifying lens.

The US association PMMI (www.pmmi.org) has conducted a research by interviewing packaging operators from consumer packaged goods (CPG) firms in the food, beverage, dairy, electronics and personal care markets; materials suppliers; and contract packagers.

The result of this research titled ‘Secondary Packaging Market Research Study’ outlines how sustainability represents the top-of-mind for the 70% of the interviewed.  Or better, the survey states that sustainability  often represents a way to reach a target more than a goal itself.

Among tendency outlines by the interviewed, a progressive growth in the use of alternative materials jumps out, such as corn-based bio-plastic polylactic acid (PLA); Hexacomb, a honeycomb product made from container board and starch; thin-seal polypropylene; reductions in flute construction and micro flutes; and folding boxes in new ways to reduce corrugated fibreboard.

Needless to say, these new solutions impact on all the chain of machines (fillers, unscramblers and cappers) utilized in the primary packaging.

While shopping into the supermarket, to whom did never happen to bump into an empty shelf, instead of finding the preferred shampoo or the house detergent fragranced with the beloved pine-tree?
Well, according to GS1 Germany, 37% of people react at the lack of a product by buying another one of a different brand, 21% change supermarket, 9% give up the purchase.
Just 17% get back again. If, to these figures, we add that 70% of the customers who choose a product in replacement are then satisfied with it, it is easy to come to the conclusion that the presence of the product on the shelf encourages the affection of the consumer to the brand.
In the latest years, the variety of solutions of “Shelf Ready Packaging” (SRP) that means ” Retail Ready Packaging”, tends to project easy-to-handle packages, with reduced dimensions and clear traceability allowing an efficacious management of the space on the shelves.

Growth of pet food industry does not encounters any crisis. During the past five years it has undergone a 5% average growth per year and the most recent surveys of the international institutes are recording just a slight slow-down in the recent months. It is estimated that in the most advanced European countries and in the USA, the 85% of pet holders usually feed their animals with ready-to-eat food.
Pet food industry is trying to diversify their products in terms of preparation and segmentation between largely wide-spread products and premium products, by utilizing the most advanced technological solutions both in terms of machinery and materials.

The endless life. Recycling packaging materials represents an opportunity to reduce energy consumption and to convert wastes into a wealth for economy.

Among packaging material, aluminium is 100% recyclable.  

So cans, tubes, trays, can regenerate to new life, infinitively.  

800 cans become a bicycle; 37 are necessary to produce a coffee machine; one is enough to save such energy to keep a TV-set on for 3 hours.

United States are the world leading recyclers of aluminium, just before Japan and Italy.

Recycling aluminium allows a 95% saving of the energy necessary to produce it from the raw material.