New biodegradable and home-compostable printed laminate

A technical team at Ultimate Packaging says 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 says the Ultigreen is 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 biodegradable adhesive to metallised Natureflex.

Says Ultimate Packaging technical manager Derek Gibson, "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.”

The new product development team 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.